


as the world caves in

by jilliancares



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Enemies to Lovers, Eventual Smut, Lance is also a badass, M/M, Orphan Keith (Voltron), everyone who dies are original characters never fear, keith is from district 12, lance is from district 4, no major charater death, there is also one (1) smut scene
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:55:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 39,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28219578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jilliancares/pseuds/jilliancares
Summary: Keith is 18 and unlucky enough to be picked from the reaping bowl on the very last year that he's eligible to be in the Hunger Games. It makes watching people who volunteer for the "honor" of playing in the Games, like Lance McClain, climb to the top of his shit list.He'll kill him first.
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Comments: 554
Kudos: 706





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hey guys!!! new chaptered fic COMIN' AT YA!! in case you didn't read the tags, neither keith nor lance are going to die in this fic. spoilers but WHATEVER. rest easy knowing that i would never do that 😤 
> 
> this fic is already complete and will be updated once a week until it's done! if you'd rather binge the whole thing in one go, feel free to head over to my twitter to figure out how that can be done ;) (@jacecares / @bluegaysonly)

The claustrophobic press of people all around him isn’t helped by the heat and humidity, which is intense even for Twelve. Not a soul is speaking. They all just stand there, staring at the screens usually deadened by the lack of electricity while the same video they watch every year plays out across them.

Keith vaguely recognizes a few of the people surrounding him. He should probably recognize even more of them — they’re in his age group, were in his same class — but he’s never been all that great at names and faces. He’s always been more occupied with himself. Making sure he survives, doesn’t starve, lives until the next week. Tasks made even harder thanks to the fact that he lives in the only orphanage in Twelve, filled to the brim with as many hungry mouths as him and caregivers who don’t care much for them at all.

He’s almost out, though. He just turned 18, which means he’s going to be out of the Home within a few days. Responsible for finding his own housing, somehow, and getting a job. Probably in the coal mines.

He just has to get through this reaping, first. His last one.

Keith should probably be more worried about the reaping. It instills a sense of terror in all of them — exactly what the Capitol intended when that Games were first created, he’s sure — but after having had his name in that glass bowl all these years, yet to be picked, he feels that maybe the odds really are in his favor. His name’s definitely in there more than the average kid’s, thanks to the fact that they’re forced to take tesserae back at the orphanage, but it’s fine. This is his last reaping. It was his last tesserae. After this, surviving will be solely up to him.

“As always, ladies first!” the presenter — a woman who looks as absurd as everyone else in the Capitol — reaches her hand into the glass bowl. Her attitude never matches that of their district, of the terrified children who await their fate, dreading the sound of their name on her plastic lips.

“Rosie Dell!” she calls, and the crowd is silent. A girl, about fifteen, makes her way through the crowd. Keith almost recognizes her, maybe. Another face that they’ll never see again. “Get on up here, don’t be shy, Rosie!”

“And now, the boys!” she continues. Keith should know her name, honestly. Except she’s new this year, and Keith doesn’t remember her introduction.

Her hand reaches into the bowl and Keith’s thinking about the mines. About the fact that he has no money and is about to have no home. The fact that he might be homeless for a little while as he saves up, and that he doesn’t really have anything he can sell to help speed that along. How if he dies on the streets, he won’t even be the first.

He’s so preoccupied, so worried about things that don’t even matter. And they _don’t_ matter, he realizes seconds later. None of it ever mattered. The only thing that does matter, and that will probably matter for the rest of his life, is this:

“Keith Kogane!” she calls.

He hears it through this haze in his ears. Thinks he’s dreaming, for a second. And then the crowd is parting around him, because despite the fact that Keith doesn’t remember their names, their faces, they obviously remember his. Their eyes are sad or downturned or relieved as they look at him, the tribute, the name called that wasn’t _theirs_ , and Keith realizes his feet are moving through the path they’ve created.

Realizes that woman is talking to him, hurrying him to the stage.

Realizes that he’s standing up there, dirty and thin and starving, having barely survived living in Twelve and now expected to fight for his meager life in the Hunger Games, against kids better fed and better prepared than him.

He realizes that this woman calling his name isn’t the beginning, but the end. An ode to his death.

He shakes the female tribute’s hand, blinks into the lights and the cameras, allows himself to be ushered into the Justice Building, where no family or friends will come to see him. He follows, acts, listens in a state of shock, only really able to think about one thing.

At least he won’t die on the streets. At least the Capitol will pay for his burial.

\--

He meets Shiro on the train. Shiro must’ve been at the reaping, sitting on the stage as victors of the Hunger Games do, but Keith hadn’t noticed him.

Rosie disappeared into her room immediately, her eyes dry but her hands shaking. She probably has more to live for than Keith does. That doesn’t mean Keith wants to live any less.

“How are you feeling?” Shiro asks. Keith knows who he is, obviously. Everyone does. He’s the sole living victor in Twelve, famously having won his games even after having his arm cut off by a tribute from Two. He gave himself a tourniquet and the Capitol gave him a new arm, after he emerged broken, battered, and no doubt traumatized.

Now he has to send two kids to their death every year, making idle chit chat and offering advice that won’t amount to much in an arena full of people just as desperate for their own survival.

“Does it matter?” Keith says.

He wants to like Shiro, but it’s hard. Because Shiro is a nice guy, and it really does seem like he wants to help, but he’s already been through the Games. He survived. And now he’s rich off his ass, living in the Victors’ Village while Keith has spent the last 18 years of his life trying desperately to survive. He’s already been fighting for so long, but at least here in Twelve no one is actively trying to kill him. They just aren’t actively trying to help him survive, either.

“Of course, it does,” Shiro says. “You can’t give up.”

“There’s no way I can win,” Keith says.

“You can,” Shiro insists. “People always underestimate Twelve, but we’re used to being hungry. I’m sure you’re resourceful enough to find food out there,” he says. And he’s right. Keith has foraged in the meadows for his dinner before. Even killed a squirrel or rabbit a couple times, having surprisingly thrown his knife with enough accuracy to do so. “What other talents do you have?”

“I’m okay with a knife,” Keith admits. It’s the only possession he’s ever cared about, really. Most babies who are left at the orphanage, either because their parents died or couldn’t afford to raise them, are left with some kind of trinket. A blanket, or a locket. Something they can keep to remember that they were cared for, once. Wanted. Not forgotten.

Keith’s mother left him a knife. To protect himself, probably. He’s thrown it at trees, whittled sticks with it, even cut his own hair with it, at one point. It’s his favorite thing he owns, and now it’s back at the orphanage. It’ll probably be stolen from his room. He’ll probably never see it again.

“There are plenty of knives in the Games,” Shiro says. “It’s a common weapon, so they always have them.”

And Shiro’s talking to him so genuinely. So seriously. His eyes are shining with determination — this determination that Keith should probably feel himself — and something like hope blooms deep inside of him. Not confidence, but hope. If he tries really hard, if he doesn’t give up… Well, maybe he could win.

He _is_ pretty inventive. And he’s been fighting for his survival all this time, what’s a couple weeks more?

So he stays and chats with Shiro for a while. Starts asking questions instead of just answering them. He helps himself to the platters of food — more than the four of them could possibly eat on a single train ride, meanwhile his people are starving back in Twelve — and he mentally prepares himself.

Rosie’s nice, he’s sure. But there can only be one winner of the Games. And if he has any say in it, it’s going to be him.

He watches the recap of the reapings when he gets a chance. Sees Rosie being called, followed by him. He felt terrified and shocked and hopeless up there, but he doesn’t look it. His face is this impassive mask, almost angry-looking, and Keith realizes that he looks scary. That he looks like he stands a chance.

He stays to watch the rest of the tributes, wanting to know who he’s up against. Most of them slip through his mind, barely recognizable and hardly memorable. For some, he thinks, _I could take them._ Others, _I hope someone else takes them out first._

There’s a twelve-year-old this year, from Eight, and Keith sincerely hopes someone else kills her first. There are two other people his age, one sickly looking and one terrifying. In District Four, one of the Career districts, a boy volunteers. The announcer’s only just read the name off the paper when the boy’s saying, “I volunteer as tribute,” and stepping forward to take his place.

It happens all the time in the Career districts, these people hungry for blood and glory, and Keith decides that he’ll take them out first, if he can. He glares at the smiling face on the screen, the tanned skin and white teeth and muscular body, not defined because he’s been starved but defined because he’s worked hard, filling out those muscles himself.

“And what’s your name, volunteer?” the announcer asks, as peppy as the one at District Twelve had been.

“Lance,” says the boy. “Lance McClain.”

He’s still smiling, and stupidly handsome, which means he’ll be getting a lot of sponsors. They’ll flock to him, because all those people care about are appearances. Not the lives of the children they’re watching die on screen.

“Well, how very brave of you,” the announcer says, and then it’s on to Three, then Two. Keith barely comprehends any of it. Barely takes note of the other tributes. He’s still just sitting there, seething at the fact that he’s been forced into this, practically already on the brink of death, and Lance has volunteered his life for the Capitol’s entertainment. A game which nobody ever wins, not really.

He goes to bed that night still angry, knowing they’ll be in the Capitol by morning. His thoughts are occupied with fantasies of winning. Of showing Lance, and all the others who may have volunteered, or have done so in the past, what exactly they’re volunteering for. Why he shouldn’t be underestimated.

Despite everything, he sleeps soundly, without a single nightmare.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys!! i hope you enjoy today's chapter!

They arrive early in the morning. A big breakfast is placed before Keith at the table, as if breakfast is a luxury everyone’s supposed to be used to, and then they’re being hurried off the train. Rosie goes a separate way to meet her own stylist and Keith is led elsewhere, shoved into a room with three excitable people who are to be his prep team.

They make him look presentable. Scrub the dirt off of his skin, out from under his fingernails, and he’s cleaner than he can ever remember being. They wash and trim his hair, just a little, because they say they like the length. Say it’ll set him apart from the other boys.

His eyebrows are tweezed, the stubble on his face waxed, so he’ll remain beardless in the arena. He’s given a robe and then his stylist comes in.

She’s beautiful. Looks less like the rest of the Capitol vultures and almost like a normal person, besides the fact that her hair is white despite her age and she has pink triangles tattooed onto her cheeks.

“I’m Allura,” she says, stepping into the room and standing before Keith. He says nothing. “You must hate the lot of us,” she continues, smiling gently.

Keith doesn’t know what to say. It’s true, of course. He’s always despised the people in the Capitol. People whose outfits cost more than the amount of money he’s ever had in his life. People who are plump with a lifetime of food security. People who alter their appearances for fun, meanwhile the people back in Twelve have never had running water. Who lose their limbs in mining accidents and are forced to live without them, to adapt in a world where being limbless could mean being dead.

Finally, Keith shrugs.

“I don’t blame you,” Allura says, and Keith gets the sense that despite the fact that she’s working for the Capitol, despite the fact that she’s another piece in these Games — she knows how horrible they are. Knows that she’s greeting and beautifying children she’ll likely never see again. People who are being sent off to their death for entertainment.

Immediately, Keith likes her.

“You must be new,” he finally says. He’s never been a very sociable person. Never gotten along with others well. He doesn’t have any friends, really. Just a few people he’d maybe talk to in the halls. Most of the time, he avoided people and they avoided him right back.

Which is all only going to make his life harder in the Games. It’s the people that are funny and personable at the interviews who get sponsors. The only people that can get away with being big and brooding and silent are those that are giant and terrifying-looking, a category which Keith doesn’t fit into.

But he tries to practice, now. Tries to actually talk to his stylist, who is actually someone who’s trying to help him. If Allura can manage to make him look good, he might capture the attention of some sponsors. Might be able to gain a boost in these Games.

Allura, like Shiro, is one of the people who are going to try to help him survive.

“I am,” Allura says, though Keith already knew he was right. The stylists are always interviewed before the Games, after the tributes are presented, and Keith would’ve seen her before if she wasn’t new. The stylists from Twelve are often being switched out. It’s almost a guaranteed loss, a tribute whose designs will never be remembered. Their district has won the least amount of games since its beginning, 65 years ago.

“Sucks that you got stuck with Twelve,” Keith says, as she’s circling his body, poking at his muscles and running her hands through his hair.

“I requested Twelve, actually,” Allura says. “And I think I have a winner.”

Keith scoffs. They must be required to say that.

“I’m serious,” Allura says. “Do you really think you don’t stand a chance?”

“I don’t think I’ll be helpless out there,” Keith relents, because it’s probably important that he starts believing in himself now. He’d already decided that he was going to try to win, it’s just hard to keep that mentality when faced with the fact that he’ll soon be shoved into a ring full of kids just as determined to survive as he is. “But I don’t think you should get your hopes up.”

“Well, they are up,” Allura says simply. “I don’t think you realize how good of a chance you have.”

Keith just shakes his head. She doesn’t even know him. What is she talking about?

Allura pauses in her examination of him. “You really don’t believe me?”

He shrugs. He’s still pretty sure that their stylists have to hype them up. Have to say that they believe in them.

“You’re aware that attractive tributes often get more sponsors?”

“Of course,” Keith laughs. “Just another disadvantage I have.”

Allura’s standing in front of him now, her eyes wide and her lips parted. “You really don’t realize?”

“What?”

Allura laughs — a light, tinkling laugh — and Keith thinks it should drive him insane. He doesn’t laugh often. He doesn’t have much reason to. But when he does laugh, it’s usually dry. Usually sarcastic. It usually isn’t a sound of pure amusement, like Allura’s laugh.

With that, Allura drags a full-length mirror in front of Keith, coming to stand beside him.

“Besides the fact that you’ll obviously have people lining up to sponsor you, Shiro already told me that you’re an expert with a knife.” _Exaggerating much?_ Keith thinks. Shiro’s never even _seen_ him with a knife. And Keith only said he was okay with one, not an expert.

But, looking in the mirror, Keith thinks that he can maybe see what Allura’s talking about. He’s not… he’s not _unattractive_ , he realizes.

Growing up in Twelve, it’s hard to feel anything but. Constantly coated in a layer of coal dust, without running water or these expensive soaps and shampoos here in the Capitol.

But staring at himself right now, Keith almost feels like he’s looking at another person. His skin is clean, his hair looking soft and flowy, and Allura hasn’t even done anything to him yet.

“I guess I might stand a chance,” Keith relents. With that, Allura beams at him. And she gets to work.

Most of the time, stylists dress them up as coal miners. Putting them in these drab jumpsuits and even lathering them with coal dust, as if anyone would ever find that appealing.

Allura has a different vision. She works on his face first, and Keith’s eyes widen in surprise when she pulls out makeup. He isn’t sure if he’s ever seen the male tributes with makeup before, but he bites his tongue, trusting that she knows what she’s doing.

Creams and powders are applied to his skin. She works on his eyes for a long while, lining it with this liquid cream and dabbing away at his eyelids for what feels like an hour.

His hair is long, but he’s never done much with it himself. He’s sheared it out of boredom before, but he doesn’t mind the length. Usually, he throws it up in some kind of ponytail whenever it gets in his face too much.

Allura, on the other hand, braids two strips of it. Just a little row of braids starting from his temples, which she pulls back. She gathers all of his hair in a bun and then hands him his outfit.

It’s not a jumpsuit, which is the first good sign. It’s already fitted to him perfectly, just these jet-black pants and long-sleeved shirt, a golden chain wound through the pant loops as a belt. When he’s finally allowed to look in the mirror again, he’s speechless.

He looks… beautiful, is the most appropriate word. Almost feminine. But mostly dangerous. His eyes are dark, the eyeshadow coming up in sharp points toward his temples, pointing straight toward his braids which follow along the top of his head and melt into his bun. His outfit makes him look sleek and powerful, and what he thought was completely black material is actually embedded with a golden glimmer, sparkling whenever he turns in the light.

“Wow,” he manages. Because his brain’s not offering much else at the moment.

Allura just grins. “They’re gonna love you.”

\--

The chariot ride is overwhelming. Keith doesn’t say a word to Rosie — they just stand there in silence as they’re paraded in front of the Capitol, coming to a stop in front of the president’s mansion. Keith can hear him talking, going on with his speech, but he can hardly concentrate. He’s watching the screens, seeing himself pop up on them along with the other tributes.

Of course, he notices Lance. He’s the only other male tribute wearing makeup. His shirt is golden mesh, imitating a fishing net, and he looks gorgeous. Keith wants to kill him.

He probably shouldn’t want to. He’s thought long and hard about the Games and the Capitol and the politics of it all before. None of them are supposed to be killers — hell, murder is illegal in all the Districts. But during the Games, it’s encouraged. They’re supposed to come from their normal lives, where they live in fear of the Capitol and struggle to survive on a day-to-day basis, and compete for their lives.

It’s sick. And it could all be ended, really, if everyone refused to play. If the kids who got reaped banded together in the games, refused to kill each other. Without the murder and fighting, there’d be no show. No purpose.

But there’s no way everyone would agree to that. No matter how desperate everyone might be for it to end, to not have to endure the games, or the reaping, or watching their friends and family get chosen only to later see them killed, again and again and again on the recaps — no one will go for it. Because everyone’s just a little bit more desperate for one thing, and that’s to make it home alive. To survive the Games, and not be killed for entertainment, without purpose.

Keith’s thought this hundreds of times. Forced to sit at home and watch the games, forced to watch children fight and struggle, starve and suffer — he’s had elaborate daydreams of what he would’ve done. How he would’ve outsmarted the Games. How he would’ve refused to participate, or even killed himself in the beginning just to make a point.

But all those thoughts, that anger and desperation for change, have disappeared. Actually faced with it, the real thing, the urge to survive — he can only think about one thing. He can only analyze his opponents’ weaknesses, strategize in his own mind methods for his survival. And above it all, fantasize about being the one to kill Lance McClain.

The _volunteer_.

He’ll learn, in his last moments. As he’s lying there, bleeding out on the ground with Keith’s dagger in his neck, Keith standing over him, unforgiving — he’ll learn. He’ll realize what exactly he signed up for. How wrong he was, to want this glory from the Capitol. To want to compete in the Games, and to think he ever even stood a chance.

Keith will prove him wrong. And he won’t hesitate in doing so.

\--

Rosie goes to bed early that night, hardly saying a word to anyone. Keith’s starting to think that he won’t have to speak to her at all before the Games. Maybe ever in his life.

He eats dinner with Shiro and Romelle — that’s the name of the woman who drew his name in the reaping, he finally learned — and gorges himself on the Capitol’s decadent foods. He showers before bed, another luxury the Capitol doesn’t even realize they have, and the makeup streams down his face and colors the water black as he gets clean, much as it would had he actually had a shower back home.

The bed is similarly better than anything Keith has ever experienced in his life. Despite its comfort, this time he has trouble falling asleep, probably because he isn’t being rocked into unconsciousness by the train.

Instead, his mind whirs. He thinks about the upcoming Games, in just a few days. He thinks about the other tributes. Wonders what they’ll actually be like, when he meets them in there.

He thinks about tomorrow, and the training he’ll have to do. How he’s going to meet all the other tributes, going to speak to some of them, probably. The idea fills him with nerves and repulsion, knowing that no matter who he talks to, in the next couple of weeks, either he or them will be dead.

Keith falls asleep without realizing it, his dreams senseless but still uneasy. When he wakes in the morning, he forgets where he is for a second and then remembers all too suddenly.

Breakfast is another royal affair — more food on one plate than he’s used to seeing in a day — and then he and Rosie take the elevator down to the training floor in silence. Keith starts to wonder if she’s less silent around Shiro and Romelle. If she’s only distancing herself from him because they’ll be competing against each other soon.

If that’s the case, Keith wholeheartedly respects it. He’d rather not talk to her — or any of the other tributes — at all before the Games.

The training room is decked out with everything you could ever imagine. Weapons of all kinds — swords, knives, bows, spears — and an array of different survival skills stations. Knot tying. Fire starting. Hunting and fishing, plant identifying, compass orienting.

Shiro advised him not to touch the knives in front of the other tributes so as not to give away his skill, so Keith breaks away from Rosie and heads to the first empty station he sees. There’s an old woman manning it, there to teach them, and she seems happy to have a student.

Keith already knows how to tie knots, so he’s probably wasting his time at this station, he thinks, before he quickly learns he’s wrong. There are all kinds of knots for him to learn, and she teaches him different ones for different situations. Why the slipknot will be useful to him, for quick get-aways. How he can make a snare to catch food.

From there, Keith ventures to other empty stations, usually the survival ones. He climbs ropes. Studies how long a person can go without food and water. Learns which plants are edible, which are deadly, and which will sustain him the longest. He’s taught how to build a fire and how to fish, though he struggles with that one the most, not having the patience.

The swords call to him, but Keith ignores those, too. He thinks if he finds one in the arena, he’ll take it, even though he’s not trained on it. He’ll take any weapon he can get, really.

There’s three whole days of training, and Keith spends the second much like the first. Except for one key difference: Lance.

Keith can _tell_ the guy is following him around. It’s unsettling, because Keith’s pretty sure it’s a premonition for what’s to come in the Games. For whatever reason, Lance must have his sights set on Keith, too, and Keith doesn’t like that. In his head, he’d been hunting a cocky, unsuspecting Lance. Now, Keith’s realizing he shouldn’t underestimate anybody.

At first, Lance trails him at a distance. Visits the training booths he’s been to, maybe just to learn all the same skills that Keith has. To make sure that Keith won’t know more than him in the arena.

But then, he gets more ballsy. He’ll arrive at a station at the same time as Keith, and then Keith will leave right when it starts, simply to get away from him. Lance is apparently too embarrassed to do the same, not wanting to leave the instructor without a student, so it’s a guaranteed way to avoid him for the next hour.

That’s what Keith thinks, at least, until Lance suddenly appears when Keith’s halfway through a session. He’s back at the knot station — learning how to make a net, this time — when Lance appears by his side, making Keith’s breath catch in his throat.

He knows he’s not in the arena yet, but it feels like he’s been caught. Like he was the prey, convinced he was outsmarting his predator, only to realize he’d been wrong all along.

“Back for another lesson, Lance?” the woman at the table says kindly. Keith can’t help looking at him, seeing him up close for the first time.

He’s unfairly attractive, even without all the prep they’d gotten before their chariot rides. His skin is golden from days in the sun, spent swimming or fishing or whatever the people in District Four do. When Lance smiles at the woman, it’s blinding, both because his teeth are so white and because he looks that genuinely happy to see her.

Right. Because he volunteered for this.

Just like that, whatever feelings of awe were emerging in Keith’s gut are squished. This is Lance, his enemy, someone who volunteered to play in these horrific Games.

“I was actually hoping I could jump in with this lesson,” Lance says easily. “I wanted to brush up on my net-tying skills.”

Fat chance. He probably makes nets all the time, back in his district. He’s just here to taunt Keith, or something. Threaten him in some way.

But as Keith goes about ignoring him, concentrating on his rope as hard as he can, his fingers working steadily with the material, Lance grabs the other end. Starts tying from the opposite side.

“Hey,” he says.

Keith thinks about saying nothing, just continuing to ignore him, but he has a feeling that won’t really work out in the end.

“What?” Keith says. “Why are you talking to me?”

“Can tributes not even talk to each other these days?!” Lance says, sounding scandalized. Keith looks up in time to see Lance’s head whip dramatically back and forth. “It’s okay,” he says. “Everyone else is doing it.” And then he smiles that big smile again, this time directed at Keith, and Keith feels his resolve weakening. But it’s fine, because maybe he can gain Lance’s trust in this moment and kill him more easily later on in the Games.

“Funny,” Keith says, deadpan.

Lance’s eyes widen. “With that sense of humor, you’ll never survive in the Games. You’ll just be pissed about whatever the Gamemakers do to you rather than playing it up for the views.”  
Keith _wants_ to throw up on him. Just imagining it almost makes him smile. Because the shit Lance is saying is insane and the image of him standing there, with Keith’s breakfast all over the front of his shirt, makes this whole experience almost more bearable.

“I’ll worry about my own survival. You worry about yours,” Keith bites out. Which he probably shouldn’t, honestly, if he doesn’t want Lance to realize that Keith is absolutely going to try to kill him in three days’ time.

Except Lance, because he either has some kind of mental problem or perhaps because he’s simply a sociopath, grins. “See, that’s the thing,” he says conspiratorially, lowering his voice. “I was hoping we could worry about _each other’s_ survival.”

Keith just stares at him, not comprehending.

Lance’s smile melts just the smallest amount. “You know,” he says, even quieter. “Like, team up?”

“Right,” Keith says. “So that you can kill me in my sleep later?”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” Lance says, looking almost thoughtful. Everything about him is theatric. It’s as if he’s already on camera, except he’s not. “Typically, allies work together until there are too few people left or one of them is killed.”

“And half the time they turn on each other,” Keith points out. “Which is why I’m not going to ally myself with anyone.”

Lance just frowns, and Keith can’t stop his mouth from running anymore. He’s been silent for too long. “Aren’t you allying with the rest of the Careers, anyway?”

“They sure think I am,” Lance says darkly. “But those are the allies who turn on each other most often,” he adds. “And I wanted to ally with you.”

“I don’t see why,” Keith says without thinking. “You don’t even know me.”

“Imagine _us_ being partners, Keith,” Lance says, and Keith is for some reason surprised that Lance knows his name. It makes him flounder for a second, confused. “We’d get so many sponsors. The two hottest Tributes onscreen at the same time? It’s the Capitol’s dream.”

Keith flushes, cursing himself. That’s the second time someone’s called him attractive, and _this_ compliment didn’t come from his stylist. Not to mention it’s coming from _Lance_ , someone he could actually be attracted to were he not planning to kill him. But then he registers the rest of his sentence and how big-headed it sounded and he’s easily able to ignore those feelings.

Plus, the fact that Lance wants to partner up based on looks alone? Either he’s really confident in his own skills, or he’s a complete idiot. Keith could be dead weight out there, for all he knows. He could be useless with a weapon. He could scream at the first sign of danger and get them both killed. Lance has no way of knowing.

“Well, I have my own dream, and that’s not getting killed in my sleep,” Keith says, before dropping the net, leaving it hanging from Lance’s hands. “Good luck with that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading!! if you want to be able to binge the whole thing at once, check out my twitter: @jacecares / @bluegaysonly ;) <33


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GUYS i'm so embarrassed ASLDKJFAKS. this was supposed to be chapter 3, i accidentally uploaded the wrong one!!! i'll still be posting a new chapter next week bc this was my mistake, but if you already read what was previously chapter 3 (when they enter the games), that was supposed to come after this 🥵 I'M EMBARRASSED AND I'M SORRY

And that should be the end of it. Keith gave his answer, clear as day, and if Lance were any self-respecting person, he would honor that.

On their third and final day of training, however, Lance has clearly not given up.

“Want to spar with me?” he asks first thing in the morning, having immediately beelined for Keith, who says no.

And later, when Keith is struggling at the shelter-making station, Lance pops up out of nowhere and helps him. Like, points out what he’s doing wrong and how he can improve his shoddy shelter. Keith ignores him and his advice and later watches his shelter collapse in on itself, like Lance predicted it would.

Keith’s itching to touch the weapons more than ever, but when Lance tries to get him to practice with swords and axes with him, he remembers his promise to Shiro and steers clear of them. And of Lance.

It’s during the lunch break, when Keith is sitting alone at his table, that Lance finally corners him. Just — sits down next to him. Starts eating his own food.

“Haven’t I already told you to leave me alone?” Keith says, his sandwich suddenly tasting dry in his mouth.

“Sure,” Lance says. “But you realize that won’t work in the arena, right? You’ll have to kill people to get them to leave you alone.”

“Guess that means you’re on my list,” Keith says snidely, as if Lance weren’t already on his list. And Lance laughs, as if Keith is joking.

“I’m telling you, we’d make a good team,” Lance says. He’s annoyingly confident and annoyingly pretty. His knee is pressed against Keith’s under the table, and Keith realizes it’s the first touch he’s felt from another normal person in a long time. Not a stylist dressing him or a peacekeeper ushering him around. “The sooner you admit it, the sooner we can start planning how to win.”

“Two people can’t win,” Keith says instantly. “So there’s no ‘we’.”

The next day is their performances for the Gamemakers. They all sit in the cafeteria, silent for once, waiting for their names to be called. Lance is the eighth person so go, and he shoots a grin at Keith from across the room when he leaves, as if Keith has ever indicated that he wants to work together and they’re actually allies.

Hours pass until it’s Keith’s turn — he’s the last person to go, being the male tribute from the last district — and the Gamemakers are clearly bored. They’re chatting up in their box, laughing and eating and drinking. Even this is entertainment for them, and the Games haven’t even started yet.

Either way, Keith does what he planned to do. He picks up an array of knives and throws them at the targets, surprising himself more than the Gamemakers when he actually hits them. He always thought it was luck when he managed to hit things with his knife back home. Just tree stumps in the meadow, and the occasional squirrel or rabbit when they wandered by.

Now, Keith’s thinking he must’ve had some sort of innate skill. Some ability that he probably should’ve been training the last eighteen years, preparing for an inevitability like this.

The Gamemakers dismiss him boredly after his performance and Keith returns to their floor, the penthouse, to await his score. Rosie’s already seated on the couch (silent, as always) and Keith grabs a snack before joining her, never missing an opportunity to eat.

Shiro settles in next to him, obviously grateful to have the tribute who talks back. Keith almost snorts at that thought, because he’s never been very talkative, but in comparison to Rosie he sure seems like it.

“How’d it go?” he asks.

Keith shrugs. “Okay, I guess. They didn’t seem very interested in me.”

Shiro doesn’t respond, mainly because the program starts. The famous host of the Games, Coran Altea, appears, talking about the tributes this year and what promise they show.

“That’s my uncle,” Allura pipes up, sitting on the armchair nearest to Keith. He doesn’t see the resemblance, but then everyone in the Capitol is always altering themselves. It wouldn’t be hard to look different from your relatives.

Keith forces himself to pay attention, now that he actually recognizes most of the tributes and will be competing against them soon.

Both tributes from One and Two score well, getting nines and tens. Lance, unsurprisingly, scores high as well — ten — though the girl from Four only scores an eight.

None of the scores really surprise Keith. Most are unremarkable, though a few from unexpected districts rank surprisingly well. It’s possible that any of these people could’ve played themselves down, intentionally performing badly in order to be written off as an easy kill. That could be a good strategy as well, Keith supposes, but it’s not the best way to earn yourself sponsors.

Keith gets an eight. Not the best, but certainly not the worst. Shiro pats him on the back proudly, and Keith is honestly relieved, considering the fact that he didn’t think any of the Gamemakers were actually watching him.

Rosie scores a six, and Keith realizes that he has no idea what she did in there. What skills she presented, or what weapons she might’ve used. He should probably feel more threatened by her, considering he knows relatively nothing about her, but tributes rarely target others from their own district. The only time Keith can remember same-district tributes killing each other are on the rare occasions that they’ve been the last two in the arena, usually tributes from the Career districts. But even that is rare, so Keith isn’t worried.

“We can definitely work with an eight,” Romelle says happily, standing up from the chaise and clapping her hands excitedly. “Everyone hungry?”

Dinner is this lavish soup, delicious bread rolls and tiny sandwiches. Champagne is served, but Keith only takes a few sips, irrationally afraid that the alcohol will still be in his system two days from now when he’s in the arena.

“We have your interviews tomorrow,” Romelle says, tearing off a chunk of a roll and dipping it into the creamy soup. Keith immediately copies her. Despite how much he despises the Capitol, he can’t help enjoying the food. “We’ll spend the day practicing and picking strategies. Your stylists will be back by the evening and they’ll get you all fancied up before the interviews. It’ll be great!”

Keith smiles tightly when she looks at him for a response. He hardly thinks it’ll be great. In fact, he’s always thought that this was the weirdest part of the Games.

Getting to know the tributes on live television. Talking to them about why they think they’ll win, why they should be sponsored. Talking to them like they haven’t all been given a death sentence. Like 23 of them won’t be dead in just a number of days.

Keith manages to get to bed easily that night, his stomach full of the creamy soup and inordinately exhausted from the whole day. He doesn’t dream, but he wakes up feeling uneasy, leading him to believe he just can’t remember whatever horrors occurred in his unconscious mind.

He spends the morning with Romelle, practicing sitting up straight — “ _Shoulders_ , Keith, keep them back!” — and smiling. It feels unnatural, because he barely smiled during conversations with people back in Twelve and he can see even less reason to do so for the people eagerly awaiting his death.

Eventually, Romelle gives up on trying to make him smile and passes him on to Shiro. They go through multiple ways for Keith to try to present himself, Shiro nixing all of them almost immediately.

He can’t be flirty. He can’t be happy. He is broody, but he’s not really big and scary enough to pull it off. He’s not funny. He’s not charming. He really has no gimmick at all, no reason to make people want to sponsor him, and he’s hardly any help to Shiro.

Throughout their hours of practice, Keith grows more and more irritable and snappish. By the end of it, he’s sitting in his chair with his arms crossed, glowering at Shiro as if he were one of his opponents rather than his mentor, desperately trying to help him.

“Just… don’t insult the Capitol,” Shiro finally settles on. “Don’t say anything mean. That’s the best you can do.”

Still fuming, Keith stomps off to his room, where Allura is already waiting for him.

“You look happy,” she comments.

“Everyone’s going to hate me,” Keith says. “They’re not going to sponsor me. Or maybe they’ll sponsor me just so they can send me poison and kill me faster.”

“Sponsors can’t send poison,” Allura says reasonably. “Just relax. You’re going to be fine.”

Keith highly doubts it, but he sits down and lets Allura work her magic. She dresses him in red this time, with eye makeup to match. It’s almost like a jumpsuit, as it’s all one item of clothing, but it’s fitted and sharp-looking and she accents it with a black belt and black boots.

“You’ll be fine,” Allura repeats, once they’re standing at the elevator, waiting to go down with everyone. “Coran will ask you questions. Just answer them honestly.”

“And try to smile,” Romelle pipes up.

“And don’t insult anyone,” Shiro adds.

“Got it,” Keith grumbles, and then they’re all stepping into the elevator and being whooshed off to the interviews.

They’re all put on the stage at the same time, lined up by gender and tribute. Keith’s going to be the last one to speak, which would probably be a good thing if he had any confidence in himself. Instead, he thinks the round of interviews are going to end on a low note, with his interview flopping horribly. He’ll probably be remembered only for how boorish his own interview was, outshone by everyone else’s.

“Welcome, welcome!” says Coran. “I’m your host, Coran Altea, and I’m here tonight with this year’s tributes! This Hunger Games is already looking like it’s going to be a fantastic show, so without further ado, your tributes!”

He goes on to interview everyone, calling them up one by one for their five minutes in the plush armchair beside him. First is Gem, the female tribute from One, who waxes poetically about how much she loves the Capitol and how she can’t wait to come back after she wins the Games. She’s followed by her counterpart, Cash, who manages to convince the audience that in his three days of training, he’s mastered every weapon that could possibly be in the arena.

Keith believes him. Not that he mastered them that quickly, but that he trained ahead of time and already knew how to use them all. He was probably one of the tributes that volunteered, not that Keith remembers much of the reaping after Lance’s debut.

Next comes those from Two. Luster, who obviously went for the sex appeal approach despite the fact that Keith watched her set deadly traps inordinately fast in training, and Glory, who speaks so slowly that Keith is convinced he’s dumb, if not still deadly.

The female tribute from Three is small. Younger than the majority of them here, but by no means not a threat, especially if she’s being trained by last year’s victor.

Pidge Holt was one of the youngest people to ever win the games. At just 14, she outlasted tributes bigger and stronger than her using only her brains. She famously spent most of her Games flitting lightly through the trees, making a showstopping kill at the last moment with tech she’d stolen from the plates the tributes started the Games on. The commentators had thought she was insane, either dehydrated or mad from the stress, when she’d pried open the plates and began pulling out wires.

Only, she’d fashioned them (along with a camera she’d found in a tree, hacked, and rewired) to spy on the remaining tributes and then kill them remotely with a bomb she’d created.

Ingenious and deadly. So Keith is careful not to underestimate the girl from District Three, though the boy probably shows deadly promise as well.

Soon enough, it’s Lance’s turn. He takes his seat, smiling easily at Coran as if they’re old friends.

“Lance McClain,” Coran says happily. “One of our volunteers!”

“Indeed,” says Lance, propping his left ankle on his right knee.

“Any reason in particular you decided to volunteer this year?”

“Well, Coran, I actually had a very important reason for volunteering,” Lance says, his elbows now resting on the arms of the chair. He looks completely at ease. He looks as if he’s been here before. As if all of this is old hat to him.

“Do tell!”

“There’s the fame and glory, of course,” Lance says, waving a hand as if that doesn’t matter. “But back in the Districts, we get to watch all the reapings that occur before ours, since they happen live.”

“Of course,” Coran says.

“I could’ve volunteered next year, when I’m 18, but when I saw one of the tributes who’d been reaped—” Lance whistles. “I knew I needed to come this year. I had to meet them.”

Coran gasps dramatically. “Do I dare suggest that you, Lance McClain, are a flirt?”

Lance grins winningly. All white teeth and sparkling eyes. “Well, the people back in Four wouldn’t refute it,” he says, laughing, and Coran joins in.

“Tell us,” Coran says suddenly, leaning forward. “Do you have a strategy to win?”

“I do,” Lance says, his fingers tapping away at the arms of the chair now. “But if I told everyone, it wouldn’t be much of a strategy, would it?”

Coran laughs. “I’m sure everyone’s dying to see what you’ll do!”

“They’ll see it,” Lance promises. “You can expect to see more of me.”

They continue on, Lance easily joking around with Coran, not even needing any time to warm up. He has the audience in hysterics, and it’s clear to Keith that he’s going to become a favorite. No doubt about it.

As for the tribute he was dying to meet…

Well, he’s not entirely sure that was true. He kind of thinks that Lance was just saying that to get under his skin. Maybe he’s playing mind games with Keith. Because Keith has hardly seen him talking to anyone else, especially since he spent so much of the last few days desperately tailing Keith around the training center.

When Lance’s time is up, everyone is sad to see him go. The girl from Five has a hard time following up his interview, and Keith zones in and out during the following interviews, feeling the laughter of the audience like little pricks in his skin, Coran’s jovial and booming voice turning his stomach.

Before he knows it, Rosie is stepping up to be interviewed, and he’s next.

He hears Rosie talk more than he has in the last several days, but she still says way less than everyone else who’s been interviewed. She speaks in a deadpan, and any jokes she makes are dry — things that the Capitol doesn’t laugh at, but which make the corners of Keith’s lips turn up.

She’s clearly pissed that she’s here. And, Keith realizes, she’s probably determined to make it back home.

Her interview passes in a blur and then Coran is looking at him expectantly. Keith rises to his feet, his knees shaking like crazy but thankfully not noticeably, due to the pants he’s wearing. He takes his seat beside Coran gratefully, tucking his hands under his thighs.

“Last but not least, Keith Kogane!” Coran says. His words are followed by applause and Keith’s suddenly trying to remember if everyone was applauded after being introduced. “My, my, Keith, you’re looking stunning again,” Coran says easily. He’s there to help. To guide the interviews, to direct Keith. To help make him shine and get sponsors.

“Thank you,” Keith manages. “Your niece made my outfit.”

Coran laughs loudly, stomping his feet in excitement. “It’s true!” he says. “Allura, please — take a bow!”

He gestures into the audience and Keith sees Allura stand. He feels centered all of the sudden, knowing where his stylist is. Knowing that his stylist is related to Coran — that Coran might want to help him even more, because helping Keith would mean helping Allura.

Allura raises a hand, smiling bashfully into the cameras before doing a curtsy and taking her seat. Coran turns his grin on Keith.

“Gosh, I think I and everyone else in the Capitol want to know everything about you,” Coran says dreamily.

Keith swallows down his nerves. Realizes his knee is bouncing and he can’t quite stop it. “I don’t know how much there is to know,” Keith says, laughing uneasily. “I mean, these are the most expensive clothes I’ve ever worn. The food in the Capitol makes me want to come back. Um — I got put in detention a lot.”

Coran roars with laughter, the audience following in suit. “A bad boy!” Coran crows, and Keith realizes that that’s the angle he could take, maybe. Only because Coran said it first. “I can hardly see it — you seem so polite!”

“Well, I want people to sponsor me,” Keith says honestly, and the audience keeps laughing even though it’s not a joke.

“Tell me, Keith, what’ll you do if you win?”

“Train the next tributes, I guess,” Keith says. They’re still laughing. He’s not even trying to be funny. He catches a glimpse of himself on a screen — his red makeup, red clothes — and behind him, he can see Lance, sitting in the same relaxed position he’d sat in up here. He has a hand pressed over his mouth, his grin still peeking out from behind it.

Keith looks back to Coran.

“I think our time is drawing to a close,” Coran says sadly. “Is there anything else you have to add? Anything else you want to tell your future sponsors?”

“Just thank you in advance, I guess,” Keith says. “I was afraid I’d bomb this interview and get sent poisoned food, but Allura says that’s against the rules.”

Laughter. No longer like tiny needles attacking him, but somehow gratifying. Keith smiles as Coran laughs, thanking him for his time and giving him a handshake.

Keith manages to make it back to his seat. Manages to not be noticeably shaking. Manages to hear Coran signing off and then make it back to his room to sleep — for his last night before the Hunger Games.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> asdlfkjasd as always u can find the whole finished fic by checking out my twitter, @jacecares / @bluegaysonly


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy monday! hope you're all doing well and hope you enjoy!
> 
> EDIT: if you read this chapter when it came out, you might've missed the fact that i accidentally skipped a chapter and uploaded this one instead 🥴 if you haven't already, go back and check out the Real chapter 3, where the interviews and shit happen 😔✊

Keith knows he should be eating more. He has no idea when he’ll get his next meal, but his stomach is in knots and he feels more and more nauseas with every bite.

In the end, the best he can manage is dutifully taking sips of water, not sure when he’ll next be able to drink, either.

Shiro and Romelle bid him farewell at the hotel. Shiro grasps one of Keith’s hands in both of his and tells him seriously to just stay calm, to do his best and survive and to come back, that Shiro would be looking out for him, sending gifts from sponsors to him.

Keith nods numbly to the whole spiel, barely even registers Romelle’s words to him or the way she pats his cheek gently. And then he’s being ushered into a hovercraft, his arm injected with his tracker, and they’re flying. The windows are blacked out, so that they won’t be able to see the arena from above, and when they finally arrive, Keith’s distributed directly into the ground through a tube.

He's starting to feel claustrophobic. Panicked. He walks down the single hallway and ends up in a room where Allura is waiting for him, jumping to her feet the moment she sees him.

“Hey,” she says, immediately trying to placate him. “We still have some time. Just remain calm — you can do this.”

Keith nods, numb, and she starts laying out his clothes, the uniform he’ll be wearing in the arena. Long pants. Boots. A light, breezy shirt covered by a heat reflecting jacket.

“I’d expect the temperature to vary greatly,” Allura says as she dresses him. “Probably hot during the day and quite cold during the night.”

 _If I live until nighttime,_ Keith thinks, and then immediately regrets thinking.

“Drink this,” Allura says, and Keith spends his last moments with Allura forcing himself to sip more water. Shiro told him that water would be the most important thing to find. He told him to ignore the cornucopia and its bloodbath, to either make weapons or scrounge for them on dead tributes. First ensure his own survival, then figure out how to hunt the others.

“60 seconds,” an automated voice says, and the glass tube in the corner of the room that they’d both been successfully ignoring slides open. Keith’s heart beats a tattoo in his chest, his entire body growing hot in a moment of sheer panic.

Allura rises, and when Keith manages to get to his feet, moving in some sort of dissociative state, she pulls him into her arms. Hugs him tightly.

“You’re strong and smart and you can win,” Allura tells him, gripping his arms hard when she pulls away. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Keith mumbles.

That automated voice is still talking. Counting down the seconds left in his life. Keith ends up inside the tube, watching it slide closed around him, and sweat pools in the palms of his hands, drips down his back. His legs are shaking. There’s a ringing in his ears.

The first tribute to die from natural causes before the Games even begin, he thinks hollowly, sadistically amused. Maybe he’ll have a heart attack right here in the tube.

Allura gives him a bracing thumbs up, which Keith just manages to return before the platform is rising, Allura sinking out of view as he’s momentarily enveloped in darkness.

He should’ve made friends, back in Twelve. He shouldn’t have lived his life slipping among those people, unnoticed. None of them are rooting for him, he’s sure. Why would they even care?

Is it selfish, to want to win? To want to return to his old life when he has no one to greet him, no one to pray for his return?

 _No_ , Keith thinks. _I deserve to live just as much as anyone else._

The next second, he’s standing in the arena. His platform is raised off the ground, his legs trembling, threatening to send him overboard and onto the bomb-laden ground surrounding him. Anyone who steps off their platform early will be blown sky high.

He takes a second to take in the arena. Mountains off in the distance. What must be an ocean, off to his right. Forest behind him and to the left of him.

Before him is the cornucopia. Every kind of weapon stacked in its mouth, coupled with all sorts of food, all kinds of bags. Scattered around it is stuff of less value — a few backpacks, a handful of weapons.

 _To the trees,_ Shiro’s voice seems to say in his head.

But Keith can see an array of knives in front of the cornucopia. All sharp. All deadly. And a sword, too, which he’s been dying to try, convinced he could use.

That automated voice is counting down again. Almost at 30 now. Should he fight or run?

The tributes nearest to him aren’t ones he recognizes too well. Districts Six and Nine, he thinks. It’s good that he’s not next to any Careers. Is that a sign that he should fight?

_Ten, nine, eight…_

Or will he just die in the bloodbath? Another tribute killed in the first minute of the Games, immediately forgotten?

_Seven, six, five…_

Will he die anyway, though, without any supplies whatsoever? And what’s with this arena? He’s never seen one with so many different biomes, the mountains and the forests and the ocean…

_Four, three, two…_

He probably _needs_ something from the cornucopia. Death will probably be imminent with nothing! And the sponsors might not be keen to sponsor someone who didn’t even take their chances here, to grab anything at all…

_One!_

The canon goes off and there’s the sound of wind in his ears. Keith’s running, and he realizes belatedly, he’s running in the direction of the cornucopia.

Others reach it before him. People are running beside him.

He watches as one tribute grabs a sword and swings it toward another. Blood sprays everywhere, bright and shiny and _that can’t be real, it isn’t real, people are dying already?_

Adrenaline and terror war inside Keith. There’s a backpack near him, black and kind of bulky and almost definitely full of some helpful surprises. He detours, not wanting to get any closer to the killing spree, and sprints for the backpack.

His fingers close around it at the same moment as someone else’s. His head jerks up, his nondominant hand curling into a fist, and then he sees Lance — somehow, of course, it’s Lance.

He’s holding a trident, and there’s a knife in his belt already — he must be fast — and Keith realizes he’s dead. He’s dead before the Games have even begun, because Lance is going to stab him with that trident and take the backpack.

Keith gives it a desperate tug and it comes surprisingly easily. He swings it over his shoulder, taking an uneasy step back from Lance. Killing him suddenly seems like a daunting task. How had he been so sure that he would kill him? That he would have the gall to do so, or even the weapons to manage it?

But Lance doesn’t seem intent on killing him. Maybe Keith isn’t enough of a threat. Because Lance turns, raising his trident to charge someone else, and Keith watches in amazement as the belt around his waist unlatches, both it and its knife falling to the ground.

Keith moves without thinking, snatching up both and then turning for the trees, running as fast as he can. He can hear people screaming, shouting, dying. The girl from Three shows up out of nowhere, raising a knife at him, but Keith dodges and runs harder, faster, until he’s shrouded in the woods, sprinting toward relative safety.

The panic refuses to leave him for a long while, meaning Keith runs all out for a good few minutes before he manages to adjust his pace, stumbling a few times as he forces himself to slow down. He’s thirsty already. It’s hot — like, _really_ hot — and Keith mentally plans to take off his jacket and examine his supplies once he’s far enough from the cornucopia.

He wonders if he’s on screen right now. If people are watching him jog through the forest or if the blood bath is still going on, people still killing each other and spilling blood right where they all started.

After another couple of hours, Keith judges that he’s a far enough away from the bloodbath to garner a short break. He doubts that anyone else it too close to him now — he hasn’t heard much in the forest, and if anyone else is around they’re likely trying to hide as much as he is.

He plants himself on a log, wishing he’d managed to find water already, and unzips his backpack.

A sleeping bag, not that Keith can imagine sleeping in it, considering the heat. A canteen, currently empty of water. Iodine drops. Some nuts and dried meat, which he should probably save for when he’s desperate. An extra pair of socks, as well as a pair of gloves and a hat. Some rope, which Keith is happy about, considering how long he spent knot-tying in training.

He’s still clutching the belt, the knife thankfully still dangling from it, and he stands up in order to tie it around his waist. It seems pretty sturdy, so Keith isn’t quite sure how it managed to fall off of Lance, but he’ll have to be careful to make sure the same doesn’t happen to him.

Next, he examines the knife. Pretty small. Reasonably sharp. It’s more of a throwing knife than the one he has back at home, and it’s probably supposed to be in a set. The fact that he only has one is disconcerting — he won’t be throwing this unless he’s desperate. There’s no guarantee that he’ll make the kill if he throws it, and if he doesn’t, he’ll be out a knife. Unfortunately, it’ll probably be best to kill others from up close with this thing, despite its size.

Keith had been hoping that some sort of animal might wander across his path while he was sitting there, something that he could throw his knife at and save to eat, but no animals appear. So Keith stands up and continues on his way, walking now, hoping he’ll come across some sort of river. Maybe a shrub laden with berries.

After another hour or so, the canons begin. Keith counts eight booms, meaning eight tributes died in the blood bath.

He could’ve been one of them. If he’d gone all the way to the cornucopia, if he hadn’t changed his mind and gone for this backpack instead, if Lance had been more pressed to kill him…

Keith keeps walking until, by some miracle, he finds a creek. He takes a moment to pay attention to his surroundings, affirming that he’s really alone, and fills his canteen to the brim. He treats it with the iodine drops, hardly able to wait for it to become drinkable, and splashes water on his face.

The sheer panic he’s felt all day begins to melt away. At the moment, he isn’t filled with this unrelenting adrenaline — he’s almost calm. Determined. He’s survived this long, and he has a weapon. If he plays his cards right, he can get more.

In the morning, he’ll try harder to find something to eat. For now, he’s satisfied with the water he has and the fact that he’ll be able to fill up again and get more water in the morning.

It’s when enough time has passed for the water to purify and Keith has finally unscrewed the lid of his canteen that the anthem plays. He directs his attention to the sky beyond the trees and waits to see which of his opponents are dead.

It starts with District Three, meaning both of those from One and Two are still alive. So is the girl from Three, though the boy must’ve died in the bloodbath. From there it skips to Five — Lance is still alive — and shows both the girl and boy from the district. Same with Six. Then the boy from Seven, and then the girl from Nine and the girl from Ten.

Sixteen of them left, now. Fifteen people that Keith needs to outlive.

He’s finished his water by the time the anthem has finished, so Keith fills it and treats it again. He tucks it into his bag, puts his bag back over his shoulders, and scoots into the foliage near the creek. There’s no way he’s completely hidden, but it should do well enough while it’s dark out. Plus, this way he’s ready to run at any moment. He doubts he’ll fall into that deep of a slumber anyway.

He falls asleep with his hand clutching his knife and wakes up shivering in the underbrush.

Keith tries to make sense of it, at first. It wasn’t cool when he fell asleep, but Allura did warn him that the temperature would likely vary. Keith figures the Gamemakers are just messing with the temperature until he sees the trees all around him.

It’s beautiful, if unsettling. An array of colors, golden yellows and flaming reds, a wash of colors exploding through the sky and occasionally drifting to the earth.

Soon, there won’t be any leaves on the trees. The forest won’t be as good of a place to hide, like that, without the shade and greenery to provide camouflage. Not to mention, the leaves on the ground which normally Keith delights in stepping on will sound like gunshots with every step — to Keith, at least. It won’t be easy to hide in the forest at all.

That leads Keith to wonder what advantages the other biomes have. Surely the beach is worthless. He can’t imagine anywhere to hide down there, and it’s not like he can really swim, either. And the mountains… well, there were some trees there, too. But maybe there are caves up there as well. Maybe Keith should’ve been heading in that direction this entire time.

For now, though, the ground isn’t too covered in leaves. And there’s an abundance of water here, which Keith knows he can’t take for granted. He ends up sipping more of his water, determined to stay hydrated despite the fact that the heat is no longer oppressive, and pulls his rope out of his bag.

He’s thinking he can make a few snares. Maybe space them out a bit — not too close that the animals won’t dare to approach them, but not too far that any other tributes will be likely to find them and discover him nearby.

It’s as he’s concentrating on his knot-tying, having almost perfected his first snare, when the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. There are alarms ringing inside his head for no good reason, but Keith decides to trust his instincts.

He slowly straightens up, not wanting to make it too obvious that he’s more alert in case someone really is there.

But how could someone be here? How could he have not heard them approach?

He slips his knife out of his belt, pretending to use it to cut the rope. He lets his hair fall in front of his face — it’s a nuisance, but he hasn’t found anything to tie it back with — and he looks through the fringe, examining the terrain around him.

Bushes directly to his side, clearly empty, seeing as he slept in them. The creek to his back, though there’s no telling what’s hiding in the foliage on the other side of it. Trees all around him, too. Keith supposed someone could be hiding in them.

But then, there — a few yards to the right of him. Almost completely hidden, the darkness of their clothing nearly passing off as shadows within the bush, but Keith knows better.

What kind of weapon do they have? What are they waiting for? Can they not kill him from that distance?

Keith stands, not wanting to be sitting on the ground when he’s apprehended. He considers pretending to still not notice them, even considers walking away as if to place his snare. Maybe if he left his bag, the other tribute would be desperate enough not to follow him. He could use his own supplies as bait, circling back around to kill them before they could make off with all his materials.

He hesitates too long, though. Either that, or they were planning to come out and fight him anyway.

It’s a boy Keith hardly recognizes, exploding from the bush with an axe raised, and all Keith has is a knife and some rope.

Adrenaline takes over. The axe comes down and Keith dodges to the left, raising his knife in time for the other tribute to slap his arm away, following with another swing. Keith jumps back, heart pounding, his fist gripping his knife so tightly it hurts.

The tribute grunts, their momentum pulling their body further than intended, but Keith can’t get any closer before they’re swinging again. They look mad, and Keith realizes the same look must be in his eyes right now. Crazed. Desperate. Wild.

They’re definitely on camera now — the Gamemakers would make sure of it, not wanting the audience to miss a moment.

Keith stumbles another step backward when the boy lunges, managing to trip over the length of his trailing rope, and ends up sprawled on the ground. He rolls to the side just as the axe slams into the dirt, almost having cut his face in half.

He’s scrambling to his feet, knife in one hand and his rope absurdly still in the other, when the chaos of the situation doubles.

One second Keith’s standing there, barely having gotten to his feet, and the next someone’s dropping out of the trees, landing beside him.

Keith whips to the side, prepared to stab this new attacker in the neck before they can get him first, when he recognizes Lance. He isn’t even looking at Keith — all of his attention is on the opposite tribute, who looks just as alarmed at the turn of events as Keith is. They’re not working together, then.

“Fuck it,” the tribute says, and he charges toward them both, weapon swinging through the air wildly. Lance slams him in the chest with the side of his trident and Keith immediately forgets that he only has one knife, throwing it point blank at the boy’s face.

By some miracle, the boy bats it aside with his axe, and then he kicks Lance’s legs out from under him, sending Lance to the ground. Not wasting a moment, the boy dives on top of him, axe raised even as Lance raises his trident with both hands, prepared to fend him off.

For a split second, Keith imagines just running away. Escaping from the fight and dealing with the survivor some other time.

But Lance didn’t even try to kill him — in fact, it almost looks like he’s trying to save him — and then Keith’s moving before he can think. He has his rope knotted in both hands and just before the tribute can slam his axe down on Lance’s trident, he wraps the rope around his neck and _pulls_.

Immediately, the boy begins choking. Thrashing and struggling, but Keith’s holding fast onto the rope and the boy doesn’t think to move backwards, to pull away from the rope and put himself even closer to Keith. He just pulls against it, even dropping his axe in order to scrabble at the rope around his neck, trying to loosen it.

Keith pulls tighter, panicked and terrified, as Lance lays deathly still on the ground, just letting it happen.

Eventually, the boy stops struggling. He goes limp, and Keith realizes that he’s holding up his body with the rope entirely. The next moment, the canon booms, and both he and Lance flinch.

That’s when Keith starts to panic in earnest. What if Lance was just using this as an opportunity to kill them both? Keith’s unarmed, and there’s no way Lance is going to get anywhere within choking range now that he’s seen what Keith can do.

Keith’s just about to make some sort of wild decision — either to lunge for the axe or maybe his supplies, slowing Lance down with the weight of a dead body on top of him — when Lance makes this disgusted kind of grunt.

“Get him—get him off me,” he says, sounding pained. “Please.”

And for some reason, Keith complies. He drops the rope with one hand and catches the listing body before it can land on Lance, shoving the boy to the side and trying not to feel too guilty when he lands on the ground. Trying not to remember the feeling of him thrashing against Keith’s bindings. Trying not to remember the gurgling, gasping sounds he’d made…

Lance gets to his feet, breathing heavily, and he makes no move to kill Keith. In fact, he says, “We should probably get out of here. They need to collect the body.”

“‘We’?” Keith says, not quite thinking.

Despite the whole ordeal they’ve just been through, Lance dredges up a smile. Aims it at him. “Yeah, partner.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you enjoyed!! if you want to binge this fic, check out my twitter (@bluegaysonly / @jacecares) to learn how to do so!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys! this is jillian’s friend elizabeth posting for her! her unit for the national guard was activated, but i’ll be posting until she gets back so you can still expect updates! she probably won’t be able to respond to any comments until she gets back so she apologizes in advance :)

Keith grimaces at the word _partner_ coming out of Lance’s mouth.

Teammate. Ally. Exactly the opposite of what Keith agreed to.

“You’re seriously still on about that?” he says.

“Oh, come on,” Lance says, gesturing toward the dead tribute and then seeming to think better of it. “We work well together, you have to admit.”

“You jumped out of a tree,” Keith says, remembering that detail suddenly. “Have you been _following_ me?”

Lance doesn’t even look contrite. “Sure was,” he says. “You’re welcome, by the way. You totally could’ve died just then.”

“You’ve been following me,” Keith repeats, because he’s still angry about it. Because somehow this is the biggest worry he has on his mind.

“Yeah, and I obviously didn’t kill you,” Lance says. “I was just waiting for the opportunity to show myself. You know, talk it out without you trying to kill me.”

Keith starts packing up his things while Lance is talking — his bag, his knife, even the axe — because Lance could’ve killed him several times already if he really has been following him this whole time, and also because they really do need to get away from the body. They’re starting to be inconsiderate.

Lance grabs a similar bag from the base of the tree — he must’ve dropped it down before jumping off himself — and he follows Keith without hesitation when Keith begins walking down the creek.

“I can’t believe you,” Keith mutters, shaking his head. “I told you I didn’t want any allies. Right? I didn’t hallucinate that?”

Lance, being an asshole, seems to find this amusing. “I’m very persuasive,” he says seriously. “Either we work together now, or you storm off and live with the knowledge that I’m probably following you at a distance.”

Keith mutters something under his breath that the Gamemakers will definitely have to edit out.

“Also, I got you a few presents from the Cornucopia, back when the Careers thought I’d be working with them.”

“Great, so we have enemies,” Keith concludes.

Lance pouts, obviously having expected a different reaction. “C’mon,” he says. “Don’t you want to see what I got you?”

“You can tell me what you got me,” Keith says.

Lance visibly brightens. “Food, some medicine, enough rope for a net. They didn’t have very many weapons left, so I grabbed you a couple knives.”

“Knives,” Keith mutters. “How’d you know?”

“What?”

“How’d you know I can throw knives?”

Lance shrugs. “I didn’t,” he says. “That makes me feel a lot better about my weapon choice, though.”

Keith’s silent for a moment — he plans to be silent for several moments, actually, considering the fact that they’re walking through a forest which is likely crawling with other tributes. But Lance doesn’t seem capable of keeping his mouth shut.

“And I haven’t really drank anything since yesterday,” Lance says, sighing loftily. Keith looks over at him, unamused. Lance just looks at him hopefully until Keith finally relents, handing over his canteen.

They end up stopping for a moment, giving them enough time for Lance to chug his water and for both of them to fill up their canteens and treat them.

By the time they’re walking again, Lance is already going on about plans, traps they could set, sleeping shifts and hunting. Keith still isn’t entirely sure how he got into this situation, still isn’t entirely sure he should trust Lance, but at the mention of hunting, his trepidation leaves him. His stomach’s been complaining and he’s beginning to feel nauseous with how hungry he is.

“You know how to hunt?” Keith interrupts, Lance having already entered another tangent about training each other with their own weapons.

“What? Yeah,” Lance says absently. “Are you hungry?”

“Starving,” Keith says, which is when Lance reaches into his bag and pulls a bundle of cloth out of his bag. Inside, there are several chunks of meat, already cooked, and Keith feels himself begin to salivate. “When the hell did you have time to do that?”

“Right after the blood bath,” Lance says, his mouth turning. “I hunted a bit, we cooked them out in the open, and then I snuck away when no one else was paying attention. I saw where you ran off into the woods, so I started from there. Caught up with you at the creek.”

“You can hunt and track people,” Keith says. He’s realizing that Lance is more skilled than he anticipated. And if Lance is serious about this alliance and really isn’t going to turn on Keith and kill him in the middle of the night, then he could be an invaluable partner.

Keith can kill an animal, sure, but only if he stumbles across one, really. He has no idea how to find them. He isn’t quite sure how Lance knows better than him, seeing as he comes from a fishing industry, but he decides not to question it.

“Starting to believe in this alliance?” Lance teases, handing over the meat without question. Keith gorges himself immediately, feeling energized and more clear-headed with every bite.

“Two rules,” Keith says. They’re walking again, Keith still eating and Lance holding his trident, looking relaxed and yet alert at the same time. “We part amicably when we’re down to the last few people. No just suddenly turning on one another.”

“Agreed,” Lance says easily.

“And you stop flirting with me.” Keith says it in a rush. Some sort of instinct tells him that they’re still on screen, even though the action from their earlier fight is long over. He bets people are interested in this new alliance, and despite the fact that his words are likely reaching more than just Lance’s ears, he still feels compelled to say it.

Lance laughs. He's smiling again — all white teeth and mirth in his eyes — but Keith does his best to ignore him.

“What makes you think I was flirting with you?” Lance says, which is just outrageous. So outrageous, in fact, that Keith scoffs.

“You wouldn’t leave me alone during training,” Keith begins. Lance, obviously liking the sound of his own voice, interrupts.

“I wanted an alliance,” Lance says easily. “And I got it,” he adds, clearly pleased with himself.

“You called me attractive,” Keith continues, heating up now.

“Simply a fact,” Lance says. “Although, I’m pretty sure I called us both attractive. Still waiting for you to agree on that.”

Keith ignores him. “And during the interview, you said that you volunteered because you had to meet one tribute. Except you barely talked to anyone else during training.”

Lance grins. “Figured it out, did you?”

Keith glares at him. “You’ve been flirting with me. And it has to stop.”

Lance hisses through his teeth. Taps his trident against his shoulder a few times. “Not sure if I can do that,” he finally sighs. “Spending all this time with you, fighting side-by-side… it’ll be hard,” he says. “I’d probably have to concentrate on that harder than our own survival. You could be putting us in jeopardy.”

Keith can feel himself growing redder by the minute. This conversation isn’t going the way he planned. Worse, he feels like the Capitol is likely eating it up.

“You’re insufferable,” Keith finally says.

“I’ll try my best to rein it in,” Lance says, not sounding serious at all. “Hopefully you can forgive me if I slip up.”

Keith ignores him, figuring this is probably the best he can do. Maybe Lance is playing a longer game. Already foreseeing the future when they have to split up, hoping to make Keith fall in love with him by then. Then he would _know_ that Keith wouldn’t be able to kill him if it came down to it, and he could be ensuring his own survival. Well, Keith won’t let that happen.

He’s just opened his mouth, figuring he can argue the point further, when a parachute arrives. It floats down innocently in front of them, and Lance reaches out to catch it, looking just as surprised as Keith feels.

When he opens it, there’s a single flower inside. One Keith doesn’t recognize.

Lance laughs. “I think our sponsors feel sorry for me,” he says, twirling the flower between his fingers.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s a Love Letter,” Lance says. “That’s what we call ‘em back home, anyway. You’re supposed to give them to people who you want to return your affections.”

He turns to Keith, then, extending the flower pompously. “For you, my good sir.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Keith mutters. When he doesn’t move to take it, Lance steps in closer. Keith feels frozen to the spot, anxious and embarrassed, as Lance tucks the flower behind his ear.

“It doesn’t have to mean anything,” Lance says gently, his fingers brushing the side of Keith’s face as he tucks a strand of hair behind his ear. “Just know that I’m at more of a disadvantage than you are. My feelings are more likely to hinder me, not you.”

Keith clears his throat once Lance has stepped away, feeling flushed and awkward and not quite sure what to make of it all. Furthermore, he isn’t sure whether the gift came from Lance’s sponsors or his own.

If Shiro sent it, then what does it mean? That he approves of the alliance? That he thinks this imagined romance between them could be good for them? Are more sponsors lining up the longer they’re on screen, talking about attraction and affection and all that bullshit?

 _Yes_ , Keith decides. _They enjoy watching kids fight to the death. Of course they’d enjoy a pair of star-crossed lovers. Two people falling in love, knowing that only one of them can survive_.

But fuck it. Fuck them. Keith isn’t going to play into their hands. Or Lance’s, for that matter. No one can force him to return Lance’s affections. He’s just in it for the alliance, as long as it will be beneficial to him, and then he’ll be on his own again. And that’s that.

\--

Two more canons go off during the day, though Keith and Lance hear no signs of a scuffle, meaning it happened nowhere near them. Lance walks Keith through the steps of hunting, and together they take down both a squirrel and a rabbit. The leaves have continued to fall throughout the day, making Keith cringe with every step, though Lance somehow seems less concerned than him. Probably because he can’t hear the sounds of his feet over his own voice.

“You really think we should head to the mountains?” Lance says, seeming disappointed. It’s clear he likes the forest — the camouflage of the trees and the abundance of food and the flowing creek they’ve been following — but Keith’s growing more convinced by the minute that the mountains are probably the place to be.

He can’t imagine that there wouldn’t be any caves up there. He’s sure that each biome has its own set of advantages and disadvantages, but he can’t shake the feeling that their danger in the forest is continually growing. Plus, he feels like most of the other tributes would’ve headed to the forest for safety too, which likely means it’s the most dangerous place to be.

He still can’t figure out what advantages the beach would have, though. Other than the fact that Lance must obviously be good at fishing, the beach offers no place to hide and no obstacles to use in a fight.

Then again, maybe that’s why some people would prefer it. It’d be impossible to get snuck up on on the beach, even if everyone would know where you were.

“I think we’ll end up being safer there,” Keith insists. “We might even find a cave or something.”

“Or a bear,” Lance says, but Keith thinks the other tributes are more of a cause for concern than wild animals. Until he realizes that any wild animals won’t actually be wild, but most likely mutts created by the Gamemakers.

By the time night falls, they’ve followed the creek for what seems like hours. Having not run into any other tributes all day, Keith feels their luck is probably going to be up soon. Especially if no one is killed in the night or early morning. The viewers will likely grow bored with the lack of blood.

He tries to remember if there’s usually more than three deaths on the second day, but it’s hard to tell. He’s always been so desensitized to the Games — watching because they’re forced to rather than from any real desire. He’d sit there and zone out until something violent was happening, at which point his attention would be captured despite the fact that he wouldn’t want to watch, wouldn’t want to see the murders taking place on screen.

The anthem plays and The Fallen starts up. It starts with District 8. Keith recognizes the boy immediately, having been the one to strangle him, and he feels guilt begin to claw its way into his chest. He looks so much younger projected up there in the sky. Not like the feral, angry, desperate boy who’d attacked him. Who he’d killed.

After that, it shows the boy from 10 and then the girl from 11. Both dead, now, killed by whoever else in the arena. Maybe the Careers.

The forest goes dark again after the light from the sky fades. Lance is silent for a moment.

“There’s already only 13 of us left,” he says quietly. They wound up on the ground, at some point, both leaning against their packs. Both holding their weapons.

“Is it usually this fast?” Keith says. He can’t even remember. So many Games have been forgettable to him. If he survives this, he’ll never forget it. Not a single moment.

Lance shrugs. “Usually,” he says. “The first half is usually fast, whereas the last half is usually slow. That part gets dragged out more as the sponsors grow more attached to their tributes and the stakes are upped. Plus, it’s usually the better half of the tributes.”

“Who’s left?” Keith asks, because they should probably start strategizing sooner rather than later. Figure out what weaknesses they know of, what strengths the others have.

“All the careers,” Lance says, immediately putting up six fingers. He’s including himself. “Robin, the little girl from 3. The girls from 7 and 8, the boys from 9 and 11. And you and Rosie.” He’s holding up seven fingers, having put three back down after reaching ten.

Keith swallows. “I don’t know much about Rosie. She didn’t talk a lot, but I think she’s probably a force to be reckoned with.”

“Same with Maisie, from my district,” Lance says. “She was training to apply for a Peacekeeper position. She knows her way around a lot of weapons.”

“Hopefully other people will take them out,” Keith says, immediately feeling guilty. Lance frowns, but nods. He doesn’t want to kill his district partner either.

“We know the Careers are strong, but we can’t underestimate the others. That’s what could get us killed.”

“Agreed,” Keith says. It’s growing colder by the minute, and he realizes that he can see more of the sky than he could this morning. The leaves have been falling steadily all day. “I’ll take the first watch,” he offers. “You get some sleep.”

Lance doesn’t bother to argue and Keith wonders if he slept last night at all. He started the Games with relative ease, managing to stick with the Careers and the safety they provided. He gathered extra supplies for Keith, hunted food for the Careers, and managed to slip away sometime later. That means Keith’s trail was likely already hours cold, and yet Lance managed to follow it, to track him.

He jumped out of the trees to fight with Keith, and Keith can’t imagine it would’ve been easy to sleep up there. He can’t imagine that Lance caught up with him soon enough to get much sleep even if he did — he probably caught up with Keith hours later. Just hovered in that tree above him, watching him as he slept. Or… watching over him as he slept.

Just like Keith is doing now.

Lance is curled up in his sleeping back, his back to Keith, and he’s just… completely trusting. He knew how much Keith didn’t want an ally, knew that Keith had argued against it with every step, and yet the second Keith agreed, he put complete trust in him.

Keith wants to think he’s an idiot, but maybe he’s just incredibly perceptive. Somehow, he knows that Keith won’t ditch him or kill him in his sleep. He knew that Keith hadn’t tampered with the water he’d given him, had trusted Keith to turn his back on him in the forest, to even hand Keith his weapon at one point when he was demonstrating a better knot he’d learned at the knot-tying station.

Now, Keith can’t help wondering why Lance wanted him as an ally so badly. Despite what Lance said, Keith doubts it has anything to do with the fact that he found him attractive. He must’ve seen something in Keith that led him to believe he would be a good partner in the Games, though Keith has no idea what that could be.

Hours pass, and Keith is rewarded with seeing the weather change in real time. The leaves fall faster and faster, until eventually, Keith is staring at the sky through completely clear branches. Minutes later, it begins to snow.

It all makes sense to Keith, then. Seasons. Summer, fall, winter…

Fuck.

It’ll be freezing all day. And everywhere they go, their footsteps will give them away. They’ll be easy to track, but so will everyone else. And, Keith figures, they’ll be able to leave the creek if they want to tomorrow. They could melt down snow at any point to make water, though Keith thinks they might not even have a choice. The creek will likely be frozen and completely covered in snow tomorrow.

Eventually, when Keith can hardly keep his eyes open any longer, he wakes Lance. He’s been watching the air puff out of his mouth in little white bursts, and Lance sucks in a shocked breath when he wakes up.

“Issat snow?” he mumbles, looking around in confusion. He shivers once he sits up.

“Yeah,” Keith says. “I think the arena changes seasons every day.”

“Bastards,” Lance says, blowing warmth into his hands now.

Keith, sitting on his pack to keep his ass warm, having taken out his gloves and hat hours ago now, takes pity on him.

“Here,” he says, pulling off the hat and then handing Lance the gloves. Lance crawls out of his sleeping bag, leaving it for Keith — less to pack up in the morning — and jumps up and down a few times to keep warm.

“You can get out my sleeping bag if you need it,” is the last thing Keith says before passing out from exhaustion. He curls up in the heat of Lance’s sleeping bag, pulling his limbs in close and covering his face with the sleeping bag to keep the snow off it.

He wakes a few times throughout the night: coming-to with the awareness that Lance is touching him, brushing off the building snow from the sleeping bag. It happens a few different times, startling Keith each time, though he never says anything. Eventually, he feels Lance stay pressed up against him — either to try to share Keith’s body heat or so that he doesn’t have to get up to clear off the snow — and Keith stops startling awake after that.

When he wakes up in the morning, however, he’s clear of snow, meaning he slept through the times Lance touched him after that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you can check out @bluegaysonly / @jacecares to read the finished fic!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys it's elizabeth again! sorry i'm kinda late today was my first day of school :/ BUT lots of cuteness (and mild angst) coming your way in this week's chapter!
> 
> ps sending good vibes to all of you starting classes this week 😔✊🏼

They end up splitting up the gloves. They each wear one on their dominant hand — lucky that Lance is a lefty — and use Keith’s remaining pair of socks as a replacement glove for their other hand. They switch off with the hat throughout the day, hiking through the snow in the meantime.

They’ve definitely lost the creek, but their water hasn’t frozen in their canteens, and they still have plenty. Keith’s more worried about the obvious tracks they’re leaving. More worried still about the fact that no one’s died recently. The Gamemakers will definitely be getting restless, and Keith hasn’t seen a sign of any other tributes since the District 8 boy. He wonders if anyone is buried under all this snow, or if anyone’s close to freezing yet. Is there anyone still alive who didn’t manage to get a sleeping bag at the cornucopia?

“Okay, I got one,” Lance says after minutes of silence. Keith’s drawn out of his thoughts easily, grateful for the distraction.

“Shoot.”

“I’ve drowned before. My family’s rich. Aaaand I speak another language.”

Keith scoffs. Lance is just making it too easy, now.

“Drowning,” he says. “That one’s the lie, obviously. You’d be dead by now if you’d drowned before.”

“Not true!” Lance protests immediately.

“So I was right,” Keith says, intentionally misunderstanding Lance. “That one was the lie.”

“No!” Lance says. “I did drown! My heart stopped and everything, they had to give me CPR.”

“The second language, then,” Keith guesses.

“ _Mal otra vez, guapo_ ,” Lance says smoothly. “I’m actually the opposite of rich.”

“Wow,” Keith says. “Wouldn’t have guessed.”

“What can I say? My stylist did a great job,” Lance says loftily, shooting Keith a sparkling smile. White as the fucking snow. Somehow, it’s starting to grow on him. “Your turn,” Lance adds, after they let a moment pass in silence. They’re speaking relatively quietly, still worried about where the other tributes are and how long they’ll manage to be left alone, but Lance insisted on playing games like this one almost an hour back, saying he’d go mad with boredom otherwise.

“ _It’s ‘cause I have ADHD_ ,” Lance had said. “ _My mom’s a doctor. She said that’s something they used to diagnose people with before Panem, back in the old days. It basically means I’m bad at concentrating. I don’t think I’ve ever finished a book_.”

“Okay,” Keith says, finally having thought of his three. “I’ve been on a date. I didn’t graduate from school. And… I no longer think you’ll kill me in my sleep.”

Lance laughs. Shakes his head. “Too easy,” he says. “You could’ve at least tried, Kogane.”

“Just guess.”

Lance puffs up his cheeks, blowing the air back out of his mouth. “The last one,” he finally says. “I’m sure you don’t trust me yet.”

“Probably not my best strategy to tell you this, but: wrong,” Keith says.

And could he still be distrustful? After all the chances Lance has had to kill him? After he cleared the snow off of Keith all night? After he willingly participated in this little game, elaborating on every answer without Keith having to ask, as if telling these truths about himself didn’t make him vulnerable in some way?

No, Keith can’t say that he’s suspicious of Lance anymore. He still isn’t sure it’s the smartest strategy — already, he thinks it would be hard to see Lance die, much less have to kill him himself — but he doesn’t regret it. With Lance by his side, Keith feels safer. Just knowing that he isn’t alone, and that he has someone else to depend on.

Future Keith can either deal with the consequences later or die before he has to face them.

“Wow, I’m honored,” Lance says dramatically, and then lists purposefully to the side, bumping his shoulder into Keith’s. “The school one, then. You did graduate.”

“Wrong again,” Keith says, grinning now. “I got kicked out. Got in a couple fights.”

“Shut up, you really _are_ a bad boy,” Lance says, laughing. “I thought that was just part of your schtick.”

“I’m bad to the bone, I guess.”

“And yet I still don’t believe you. You’ve really never been on a date?”

“Nope.”

“Looking like _that_?” Lance says, gesturing at Keith dramatically. And then: “Sorry, I forgot about your no flirting rule. What I meant to say was, looking as sexy as you do. In a platonic way.”

Keith snorts, unable to help it, but he quiets suddenly when this eerie feeling runs over him, his feet halting in place beneath him. Lance takes one more step before Keith grabs his elbow and stops him, too. They both just stand there, silent, ears straining.

Lance gives Keith this questioning look, obviously not knowing what they’re waiting for, but Keith doesn’t know either. He just knows that something feels… off.

And then, just when Keith is about to start walking again, convinced he must be paranoid, the howling starts. Just one, lonely howl at first, somewhere in the distance. But then the call gets picked up, grows louder and wider, more and more howls joining the first until there’s a symphony of them.

“Wolves,” Lance whispers.

“Shit,” Keith says. It sounds like there’s a lot of them. There are always different traps and obstacles the Gamemakers plant around the arena, but there’s no telling where the wolves terrain begins and where it ends. No telling if they’ll chase them until they’re killed or if they’ll manage to back off once they’ve run far enough.

“It sounds like they’re everywhere,” Lance murmurs. “No idea where they’ll come from.”

And there’s no doubt about it, that they _will_ come. The Gamemakers have obviously grown bored, and Keith is suddenly hoping they really do have enough water at the end of this. Assuming they both live long enough to drink it again, that is.

They both stand there for a moment, frozen. Not knowing which way to run. Idly hoping that the threat will go after someone else if they just stay silent long enough.

The howling stops and still neither of them dares to move — not until there’s a growl directly behind them.

Keith turns his head slowly, staring into the foliage behind them. At first, he sees nothing. Just snow-covered bushes, bits of green and brown peeking out of them. And then he sees the eyes, staring at him from between the leaves, and the second their eyes meet the bushes erupt.

Snow flies everywhere as the wolf jumps out at them, and they’re both running without another word. The snow slows them down, drags their feet as they sink in with every step, running for their lives.

They’re making no effort to be quiet anymore. The wolf behind them is growling and barking, the snow crunching under their feet and flying up around them. Keith stumbles and Lance latches onto his hand, yanking him forward, and then they’re running like that, Keith’s gloved hand intertwined with Lance’s.

Suddenly, Lance tugs him to the left, just before a second wolf jumps out on their right. When Keith glances backward, more have joined the first.

They’re definitely faster than him and Lance, but they must not be running at full speed yet. Dragging it out for the viewers.

“Cliffs!” Lance pants.

“What?!”

Lance tugs him harder and Keith goes willingly, just putting one foot in front of the other and running blindly, desperately, not ready for it to end yet.

One second they’re running through a wasteland of white, the snow falling harder and the wolves barking louder, and then they’re falling.

 _Cliffs_ , Keith thinks.

His hand separates from Lance’s as he falls, bouncing off the ground and rolling farther down. It goes on for what feels like forever, until he finally comes to a stop and his entire body aches. He lays there for a second, just catching his breath, when he hears a canon boom.

“Lance!” he shouts, before he can even think, and he forces himself to his feet and looks around wildly. Lance is sitting up a little ways from him, looking around as well.

Keith looks up, seeing the wolves crowding at the edge of the cliff but not daring to follow their deadly path. It’s a miracle they survived, Keith is pretty sure. The snow must have cushioned their fall.

And maybe the wolves killed another tribute.

There are more trees around them — it’s like a second forest down here — but Keith is pretty sure they’ve entered a new biome. Forest to the east, mountains to the west. The sea to the south, and to the north…

“Cliffs,” Lance repeats quietly, looking around them. It feels like they’re in a giant bowl, the cliffs extending as far as Keith can see. It’ll be hard to climb back up them. Impossible, while they’re still covered in snow.

“Lance,” Keith mutters, and he manages to get to his feet, stumbling closer to his ally. Lance looks a little bit dazed, but no more harmed than Keith.

“We’re not safe,” Lance says, the second Keith reaches his side.

“What?”

“The wolves,” Lance says. “There’s no way they were random. And they weren’t running as fast as they could have.”

“I noticed that,” Keith agrees. He still feels safer down here, though. The wolves have already retreated back into the forest above them, probably searching for other unlucky tributes.

“Right,” Lance says. “So they were probably herding us. Either there are other tributes down here, or there will be soon.”

Lance is right.

They only just make it to the cover of the nearby trees when they hear shouting from above them. Even from afar, it’s easy to tell that it’s the Careers. All five of them come sliding down the cliffs — somehow much more elegantly than the two of them — and then they’re standing and gathering at the base of the cliff, cursing their luck and complaining about the wolves.

“They’re going to find our tracks,” Keith whispers to Lance.

It feels like his panic has been suspended. Like he already breached the highest level of fear just running from the wolves, and now that the Careers are here, he’s finding it hard to feel too scared.

It’s ridiculous, of course, because the Careers are clearly a much bigger threat than the wolves. They have no need to make anything better for TV viewing, and they’ll follow them to the ends of the arena to kill them if need be. But Keith’s emotionally tapped out, exhausted after just half a day of snow and near-death experiences, and he feels more exasperated by the arrival of the Careers than anything else.

Right on time, their tracks are spotted. Gem is the one who catches them, shushing the group and pointing at the tracks excitedly. Keith is exhausted, sweaty and yet still freezing, and Lance is practically frozen beside him.

“Remember when you said you trusted me?” he says.

“Not to kill me in my sleep,” Keith says.

“Right. That’s trust,” Lance claims. “Please just trust me on this. I have a plan.”

And so Keith stands there, fighting every single instinct in his body, as Lance grabs the rope out of his bag and binds Keith’s hands behind his back. He slips one of Keith’s knives under the back of his waistband, probably just as a precaution, but Keith is eased by its presence anyway.

“Just play along,” Lance urges him in a whisper, before grabbing Keith by the shoulder and shoving him out of the trees. He begins talking loudly, pretending not to even notice the other tributes. “—and you’re going to regret everything you’ve ever done to me,” he says cockily. “You’re going to wish you’d never been born!”

“Lance?!” someone exclaims, and Lance’s head jerks up as he automatically raises his trident before lowering it again, as if in surprise.

“Holy shit, Maisie?” Lance says, and Keith finally puts the name to a face, recognizing Lance’s district partner. “What are you guys doing here?”

Cash, the boy from District 1, scoffs. “What are _we_ doing here?” he demands. “What the fuck are _you_ doing here? And with — with—” he gestures at Keith wildly, clearly forgetting his name. “District 12 trash?!”

Lance laughs, loud and long. “This District 12 trash captured me the very first day. Said he would keep me around as a human shield. I finally escaped after we got chased by some mutts. Turned the tables on him,” he adds, slapping Keith’s back proudly. Keith glares at him, not having to dig deep at all to perform his role.

God, this could all go so horribly.

“And you haven’t killed him yet?” Glory demands. The boy from District 2.

“You kidding?” Lance scoffs. “He acted all high and mighty about capturing me. I’m not going to let him die quickly.”

Luster, the girl from 2, laughs. The others join in easily. Keith feels sick to his stomach.

“Could be fun to have him around,” Cash decides, apparently analyzing Keith. “If he gets too bothersome, we could use him as target practice.” Gem wholeheartedly agrees with her district partner, if her shrieking laugh is anything to go by.

Apparently appeased by the fact that Lance didn’t actually betray them, and in fact managed to capture another tribute, the Careers come closer to them, looking for all the world as if they’re perfectly at ease.

“Does he even talk?” Maisie asks, the question directed at Lance instead of Keith himself.

“Mostly grunts and monosyllabic answers,” Lance says with a shrug. “He’s not too chatty.”

“I’m sure he’ll start talking once he’s begging for his life,” Gem says with a feral grin, and Lance laughs along too easily for Keith’s liking. He tests the bindings subtly behind his back, finding them realistically tight.

But Lance wouldn’t betray him like this. He’s just acting, playing along for the sake of saving both of their lives. He wouldn’t have given Keith the knife otherwise, Keith tells himself. And even if Lance does end up changing his mind, wanting to go back and be with the Careers again, Keith will manage to escape on his own. He’s not going to die like this, tied up and humiliated.

Lance falls in easily with the Careers, joining in on their conversation without any difficulties and keeping a casual eye on Keith, sometimes shoving him to make him walk faster, much to everyone else’s amusement.

Keith can barely concentrate on what they’re all saying — on the plans and strategies they’re freely discussing in front of Keith, clearly not expecting him to have any use for them. Keith’s too busy trying to think his way out of this conundrum, how he’s going to escape and whether Lance is going to be a help or a hindrance to him. At this point, it’s getting scarily hard to tell.

“What’s with the glove, Lance?” Gem asks, and Keith manages to tune back in, realizing that both Lance and himself are still wearing one glove and one sock each. Lance still has the hat, it having been his turn to wear it last. And it’s not like Keith can complain about his cold ears anymore.

“Oh, this?” Lance says, splaying his hands out. He doesn’t hide anything. Just lets everyone look. “He gave me the socks at first, when I complained I was cold. And then he couldn’t figure out how to tie a snare, so he let me have a glove so I could tie it myself. Got chased by the mutts after that. Guess he didn’t think to switch back.”

“Why?” Glory says. “Why even given you the socks? Why do anything for you, if you were his prisoner?” He’s much too suspicious. Maybe doesn’t believe any of their story at all, Keith thinks. He’s starting to panic, his fingers trembling where they’re tied up behind him, his body growing hot and uncomfortable and panicked and—

Lance snickers. “I think he has a crush on me.”

Keith flushes, predictably, and it’s like that solidifies it to them. They roar with laughter, jeers and taunts being flung Keith’s way, and he just glares at the ground, imagining it’s Lance’s face he’s stomping on. Despite the fact that Lance probably did just save their lives. Asshole.

The Careers tromp around for hours, seemingly without any real plan or destination. Apparently, they’re just hoping to come across other tributes and kill them whenever they do, not that it’s been totally unsuccessful for them. They are in the final twelve now, after all.

By the time they finally stop for the night, Keith’s feet are aching almost as much as his arms. His wrists have been rubbed raw, and his shoulders hurt from being pulled backward all day.

Lance forces him to the ground with the others when they all start eating, and he taunts Keith in a way that allows Keith to be fed, even if does have to eat it off the snow-laden ground to the sound of laughter.

“You should kiss him,” Luster says, giggling, after they’ve all eaten their fill and are talking around the fire they’ve been fearless enough to build. Keith was propped up against a tree, forgotten until this moment.

“Really?” Lance says, sounding just as amused as her.

“Well, he’s obviously obsessed with you. I mean, he captured you and kept you alive and shared his gloves. I bet he was hoping you’d fall in love with him and his generosity.”

“Might as well let one of his last memories be a good one,” Gem adds, grinning at Keith lecherously. Keith glares at her, fiercely hoping for more wolves to burst out of the trees or for a freak forest fire to begin. He doesn’t even care if it kills him, too. He just wants all of these assholes to die.

“I don’t know…” Lance says.

“Do it,” Glory says. “It’ll be hilarious.”

The others egg Lance on until he’s standing with a shouted, “Fine! Fine, you freaks!” followed by their raucous laughter. He makes his way over to Keith, ignoring the attempted murder in Keith’s eyes, and bends over theatrically.

He caresses the side of Keith’s face before leaning in and whispering in his ear, “Don’t fall asleep tonight.” When he looks back at the Careers, they’re cheering.

And then he kisses Keith.

It’s mostly a peck, really. Only a couple seconds at most. His warm lips on Keith’s, and then the most obvious flush invading Keith’s face.

Lance bows dramatically for the Careers, thanking them as he stands back up. Keith avoids looking at any one of them, silently begging for this all to be over as soon as possible.

After The Fallen plays (featuring the girl from 8, likely killed by the wolves) and the Careers sort out their sleeping shifts and finally go to bed, Keith stays awake. He stares at Glory through his bangs, just waiting for him to try and kill Keith while the others are sleeping. But Glory passes his shift in silence, sharpening his knife idly against a rock, and after an hour or two, he wakes Lance, who crawls out of his warm-looking sleeping bag and yawns loudly.

Another twenty minutes pass with Lance just sitting there, watching the other tributes, and then he stands carefully. He picks up his bag, ignoring his sleeping roll still strewn on the ground, and grabs the pack he’d confiscated from Keith just before tying him up.

Silently, he creeps over to Keith and reaches around him, undoing the knot around his wrists without even looking. He’s still watching the other tributes, and the second Keith’s hands are free, Lance raises a finger to his own lips and stands up carefully.

Keith rises, unable to help rubbing his sore wrists and accepting the pack Lance hands to him. Lance gestures in one direction — the one from which they came — and points with his head.

Keith shakes his own, pointing in the opposite direction. Toward the mountains.

Lance shakes his head more firmly, jabbing his finger behind him again. Keith finally relents, flinching with the crunch of their feet in the snow with each step.

The camp falls further and further behind them — ten feet, twenty — and still they don’t dare talk. Just when Keith thinks they might finally be in the clear, the shouting starts.

“They’re awake!” Lance hisses.

“Spread out!” someone shouts. Keith grabs Lance’s hand and starts running, wanting to put as much distance between them and the Careers as he can.

At first, the Careers are calling out to each other in the darkness as they search. But soon enough, they realize they’re broadcasting their position and fall silent.

Keith’s breathing harshly, trying to stifle the sound of his breath even as he forces himself to slow down, not wanting the others to hear the sound of their footsteps running in the distance.

“There!”

The shout startles Keith. Has him spinning in place and spotting them, standing out starkly against the snow.

It’s Luster and Cash.

“Wow, Lance,” Cash says. “Kidnapped again?”

Lance is silent. He has his trident gripped tightly in his hand. Keith wishes that he’d taken a moment to retrieve the rest of his knives from where they’re stashed into his bag.

“I’ll get the traitor, you get the trash,” Luster says, and then they’re running. Keith doesn’t even think — he just grabs the knife from the back of his waistband and lets it fly. It flips once over in the air, the moonlight and the snow reflecting brightly off it, and then it hits home, right in Cash’s neck.

Blood sprays through the air, instantly staining the snow by his feet, and he falls to the ground in segments. First to his knees, with his hands at his throat, his eyes wide with surprise and blood spilling out of his mouth. Then he falls onto his face, the blood pooling around him just as the canon booms.

Luster shrieks, obviously not having expected the fight to happen so quickly, but she’s still advancing on Lance, who’s just standing there.

“Lance!” Keith shouts, heedless of the other Careers hearing them, and Lance finally moves. He raises his trident and charges, so Keith turns and runs toward Cash.

He feels horrible, sickened and guilty and _wrong_ , but he flips over the other boy and retrieves his knife from his neck. And then, after a moment of hesitation, he takes the sword Cash was holding too.

Both are covered in blood. Both are slippery, even against his gloved hands, but Keith ignores it. Forces himself to concentrate.

Lance is fighting Luster now. Her hair’s come loose, whipping in the wind as she ducks and dodges, lunges for Lance with her spear and bounces back when she’s deflected.

It’s as she raises her spear and spins to the side that she dies.

Someone in the trees, well-hidden, had thrown a knife. One that would’ve killed Lance had Luster not danced into its way. As it is, the knife buries itself in her back with barely a gasp from her, immediately followed by a deafening boom. Someone hidden in the trees shouts — a sound of regret and despair — and then Keith is running. Grabbing Lance’s hand while he stands there, shell-shocked, and races away.

They run for hours, silent but for their breathing, as the weather changes around them. As the snow melts, erasing their escape path, and flowers bloom on the trees, a beautiful array of pinks and whites.

When they finally stop, dawn is approaching. The cliffs tower above them, looking slightly more climbable without the snow covering them. Lance sinks to the ground, exhausted, and buries his head in his arms.

“I’m sorry,” he mutters.

“What for?” Keith says.

“Kissing you,” Lance says. “I know you don’t actually like me like that. I’m sorry I did it.”

“Lance, it’s fine,” Keith says, exasperated. “It’s thanks to you that we lived through all that.”

“Hardly,” Lance huffs.

“C’mon. We have cliffs to climb.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you're impatient like me you can check out @bluegaysonly / @jacecares to read the finished fic!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: i'm not letting myself post today's chapter until i take my quizzes  
> jillian: ✨it's like a reward✨
> 
> anyway happy monday! today's chapter is SO GOOD i 10/10 would recommend using it as motivation to get your work done (if you struggle with that kind of thing like i do haha)  
> love, eli :)

Two hours later, with sore hands, aching arms, and a newly revitalized fear of heights, they’re at the top of the cliffs. They collapsed the second they made it over the top, exhausted from the relentless climbing and the countless amount of times one or both of them almost fell to their deaths.

“I hate cliffs,” Lance huffs. He’s covered in sweat, lying on his back, and his eyes are closed. His chest moves with each breath, and at some point his shirt managed to ride up, his jacket having been abandoned hours ago at the onset of the spring season.

In short, he looks extremely attractive.

It isn’t until Lance opens his eyes and looks at him that Keith realizes he’s staring. “Me too,” he blurts, looking away.

“We still planning on heading for the mountains?”

Keith shrugs as best as he can laying down. “If you want,” he says. “We know the Careers are below the cliffs. We got a good head start on them, and I doubt they’ll end up climbing up where we did.”

Lance hands Keith his canteen, and Keith takes a sip, grateful that they refilled them with snow before it melted.

“We’ll head in that direction, then,” Lance says. “It’s probably best to stay on the move anyway.”  
“Awesome,” Keith mutters, his eyes slipping shut. He’s exhausted. Lance got a couple hours of sleep, at least, having not been the first shift, but Keith stayed awake like Lance asked him to. And then they ran throughout the night. It’s been more than 24 hours since Keith slept.

“Shit!” Lance says. Keith opens his eyes just in time to see Lance slap his own arm, now sitting upright. When he raises his hand, a red bug sits on his arm, squished.

“What bug is that?” Keith asks, already sitting up.

“No idea.”

“Could it be a mutt?”

“Or venomous?” Lance adds, still staring at it.

The fact that it’s red doesn’t put Keith at ease. When Lance flicks the bug off his arm, it reveals a red welt underneath, where Lance was obviously bitten.

“Fuck,” Lance says, just staring at it.

“How do you feel? Woozy? Nauseas?” Keith’s already on his knees, holding out the water for Lance and scooting closer to examine the bite.

“No,” Lance says. “Nothing. Well… I don’t know. A little weird.”

“Weird how?”

“I don’t know,” Lance repeats. He tugs at the collar of his shirt, then itches his arm.

“Just itchy?” Keith says. “Dizzy, at all? Thirsty?”

Lance’s hands curl into fists in his lap. “Could you stop asking me so many damn questions?”

Keith blinks, taken aback. “Sorry,” he says. “I was just trying to help.”

“Right,” Lance says. “Because you think I can’t handle myself.”

“ _What_?”

“I know what you’re thinking,” Lance hisses. He whips around to look at Keith, and his pupils are huge, almost erasing the color from his irises entirely. “Because you killed that boy from Eight when he was on me. And someone else killed Luster, who I was fighting. You think I can’t take care of myself.”

“I don’t think that!” Keith says.

“Liar!” Lance shouts, and Keith almost shushes him, worried about giving away their position, but Lance looks furious all the sudden. “Just so you know, there’s a _lot_ I can do. So don’t you go thinking you’re better than me just because you have a few kills under your belt.”

“It’s not like I’m proud of them,” Keith snaps. “I’m fighting to survive, just like everyone else here.”

“Yeah, and you’re probably planning to kill me, too,” Lance says, his voice scarily calm. “But not if I kill you first.”

“What are you talking about?!” Keith says. Lance’s pupils are still blown wide. His fists are shaking in his lap, sweat dripping down from his temples. Keith’s eyes flick to the bug bite — now red and huge and irritated — and back up to Lance’s wild, furious face. “Shit.”

That’s when Lance moves. He pounces on Keith, fists raised, and the punches fly before Keith can block them. His head is suddenly aching, ears ringing, but he fights back. Rolls Lance onto his back and tries to restrain his arms.

Lance is wild, vicious, gone mad with whatever venom was in that bug bite, and Keith can only hope that it’s something that’ll wear off. Lance is so angry he hasn’t even thought to grab his trident, though, which is good. His fists are still flying, the occasional punch connecting, but Keith keeps trying to restrain him.

He doesn’t want to fight back, doesn’t want to hurt Lance. But what can he do, with Lance acting this way? With Lance bent on the notion of killing Keith for a quarrel they don’t even have?

“Kill you,” Lance hisses. “Hate you. Gonna kill you. Let me up so I can _kill you_!”

He bucks his hips and Keith rolls with it, rolls away from Lance and out from under him. He grabs his bag and runs, Lance predictably chasing him.

The snow is all gone, now, so it’s much easier to run. They’re about the same speed, normally, but in Lance’s state, he keeps tripping over branches and brambles, uncaring for the scrapes he garners and just picking himself back up, setting after Keith again.

Keith digs through his bag as he runs, groping blindly until he finds what he’s looking for. That’s when he loops back around, taking a longer path back to where they left the rest of their stuff — Lance’s bag and trident — in the hopes of tiring Lance out.

It seems to be working, too. Lance is delirious with anger and exhaustion. He’s panting loudly behind Keith by the time they’re close to their stuff again, and Keith has slowed down considerably, needing Lance to keep up.

Finally, Keith stops. And when Lance comes at him with a roar, Keith tackles him. Wrestles him to the ground and yanks his arms behind his back, tying him up the exact same way he’d had Keith tied just hours ago.

Lance is fighting beneath him, struggling against his bonds and the weight of Keith on his body, cursing and spitting insults at Keith.

Keith ignores him. He ties Lance’s hands, and once those are secure, ties Lance to a nearby tree with the remaining rope. Lance pants and huffs and seethes, but he stops struggling so much once he’s finally secure, seemingly understanding that he’s defeated.

“Untie me,” Lance demands. “Fight me. Kill you.”

“Right,” Keith says, and then drops to the ground a good few feet from him, exhausted. He leans against a different tree, ignoring the endless stream of insults out of Lance’s mouth. And eventually, on accident, he falls asleep.

Only an hour or two at most could’ve passed by the time Keith wakes up, and he doesn’t realize what woke him until he spots the parachute sitting on the ground before him.

A gift from their sponsors.

Lance is still awake, struggling against his bonds again and glaring into his own lap. He’s muttering something under his breath.

Carefully, Keith picks up the parachute, hoping it’s not another stupid flower. Inside, there’s a small vial of liquid — something that can only be the antidote — and Keith breathes a sigh of relief.

“Thank you, Shiro,” he mutters. He holds it carefully, crossing the space between him and Lance.

“Hey,” Keith says. “I have something for you.”

Lance’s head rolls back on his shoulders. His eyes are red, adorned with shadows underneath, and he grits his teeth when he looks at Keith. Without an antidote, Keith suspects he’ll die. The anger must only be the first symptom of that bug’s venom.

“Finally gonna let me kill you?” he rasps.

“Yeah,” Keith says, grabbing his canteen. He pours the antidote in it once Lance’s head lolls back down, bouncing slightly as he stares into his lap again. “Drink this first, though, to make it an even fight.”

When Lance looks back up, Keith’s holding the water out. He squats by Lance’s side.

“What’sit?” he mutters.

“Water. I don’t want to win too easily.”

Lance laughs, the sound dry and sarcastic. “You won’t,” he promises, and he obliges easily when Keith lifts the canteen to his mouth. Practically chugs the water, the bug bite evidently having dehydrated him at a faster rate.

After that, Lance forgets about Keith’s promise to untie him. His eyes slip shut, his body relaxing, and Keith sits down again, keeping watch. Hoping that no other tributes or Capitol mutts sneak up on them.

It takes hours for Lance to sleep it off. Keith breaks into their rations — leftover meat from before — and the sun is setting by the time Lance finally starts moving again. Making sleepy little sounds before he gasps, eyes flying open and head whipping around wildly.

“Keith?” he says, once he gets his bearings.

“Feeling normal again?” Keith asks.

Lance frowns, thinking. “Yeah,” he says. And then: “I tried to kill you.”

“Didn’t do a very good job,” Keith jokes.

“How did you… how’d you make it stop?”

Keith holds up the parachute, grinning. “We’ve got some good sponsors,” he says.

“I’m sorry,” Lance says, for the second time that day. “I can’t believe I— I just. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine, Lance,” Keith says. He gets up, finally untying his ally. His friend.

“It’s not,” Lance insists. “You should have left me. Or killed me. Why didn’t you?”

“Honestly?” Keith says. “It didn’t even cross my mind.”

Maybe it should have. Keith’s going to have to end up alone eventually. But Lance is smart, and a good person, and against all odds, Keith has actually grown to like him. He didn’t want to continue without him. He didn’t want to be alone.

Lance is silent for a minute. He just stands there as Keith gathers up their stuff, hands Lance his bag and trident and a portion of rabbit.

“Thank you,” he says. “For everything. You’re a really good friend, Keith.”

Keith just shrugs. “You’d have done the same for me.” He distracts himself with his bag, pulling out his knives and lining them up on his belt, arranging Cash’s sword on the other side. He’s hiding his blushing face and hoping Lance doesn’t know it. “You want to walk for a bit, or call it a night?”

They only walk for an hour or so. Stop once the anthem begins, showing first Cash from District 1 and then Luster from 2. They settle down after that, Lance offering to take the first shift since he slept most of the day, meanwhile Keith climbs into the one sleeping bag they still have, Lance having left his with the Careers.

“Ten left, now,” Lance says quietly. Maybe he’s thinking that they’d better split up soon. Keith’s thinking it too, but he doesn’t want to say it. Maybe they can leave that until after the Careers are gone. Or maybe they’ll just hide up in the mountains. Let the others fight amongst themselves for a while to make things easier for themselves.

_Or harder_ , Keith thinks. Because he doesn’t think he could do it if it were down to the two of them. Not anymore, at least.

“Yeah,” Keith says. “And it’ll be hot tomorrow.”

“We’ll find a river,” Lance says. “Get some more water before we head to the mountains. Hunt a bit, too.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Keith says, and then he lets his eyes fall shut, determinedly not thinking about anything.

\--

Keith lets Lance sleep in in the morning. Lance definitely needed it, even if he reprimands Keith for letting him sleep so long.

They have to walk for less than an hour before they come across a river. Lance sets up snares as Keith treats their water, and then treats himself to a bath. He strips off everything but his underwear and does his best to get clean with water alone, splashing his face and soaking his hair and scrubbing the dirt out from under his fingernails.

He does it all with a knife in his hand, afraid of being snuck up on when he’s vulnerable, but the only person who sneaks up on him is Lance. And he announces himself with a whistle.

Keith startles, turning to look at him, but Lance just grins. “Sorry, does that count as flirting?” he says, already pulling his shirt off. It’s shaping up to be a horrendously hot day — even hotter than their first day here — and the water feels cool and refreshing.

“I think that counts as flirting, yeah,” Keith says, but he’s unable to keep his eyes entirely to himself. Lance is well-built, and he obviously knows it. He strays too close to Keith on a couple occasions, earning glares from Keith and rewarding himself by splashing Keith in the face before swimming easily away, laughing.

Keith wishes he could stop thinking about his lips. About that kiss they shared that wasn’t really theirs at all.

He wonders what it would’ve been like had Lance not been doing it as a performance. What it would’ve felt like if it were just the two of them. If it would’ve lasted longer. If Lance would’ve cupped his face, or brushed his hair aside, or pulled Keith close.

“Here,” Lance says, snapping Keith out of his thoughts as he tosses him his shirt. His clothes stick to his wet skin, but he doesn’t even care, just happy to be clean.

“I have a game,” Lance says, barely two minutes later as they sit in the shade, waiting for animals to fall into their traps. They’ve been thinking about staying near the river today, staying cool and hydrated and doing the bulk of their traveling tomorrow, since they’re already pretty close to the mountains.

“Of course you do,” Keith says.

“It’s called Truth,” Lance says. “We just ask each other questions. Whenever one of us refuses to answer, the game is over. And they’re the loser.”

“Okay,” Keith says, bored enough to not put up a fight. “You start.”

“What was your first kiss?” Lance asks.

“Pass.”

“ _What_?” Lance says. “The game would be over already! Are you serious?”

Keith glares at him, because he’s pretty sure it’s obvious that Lance already knows. Like, Keith already admitted to never having been on a date before.

“Fine,” Keith huffs. “You.”

Lance blinks. Smiles a little. Blinks again. “Seriously?”

“I’ve never even been on a date,” Keith says. “How often do you think I go around kissing people?”

“Well, I just assumed people would constantly be trying to kiss you,” Lance says, sounding completely serious. And then: “Your turn, by the way.”

“Why did you volunteer?” Keith asks. It’s what he’s always wondered. What made him hate Lance, back in the beginning. Back on that train ride.

Lance’s mouth falls open, the question obviously surprising him. He clears his throat. “Uh, well. I mentioned being poor?”

Keith nods.

“I thought that if I won, my family wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore. I have six siblings, you know. And my grandparents live with us — my mom and all us kids. Except only my mom and my brother Marco are working.”

“Right,” Keith says. That’s a big family. Hard to afford, sure, but… well. A big family still sounds nice.

“Right,” Lance agrees. “So I figured, either I’ll win and fix all our problems, or…” he clears his throat again. “Or I’ll lose and they’ll have one less mouth to feed.”

Just like that, Keith feels like an asshole. He never said the things he’d thought about Lance out loud to him, but he’s still ashamed for thinking them. You can never really assume what’s going on with people, he realizes.

“Did they know you were going to do that?” Keith asks, forgetting it’s not his turn. Lance must forget too, because he just shakes his head.

“No,” he whispers, his voice thick. “No, and they — they said I shouldn’t have. That we would’ve been fine. Would’ve made it work.”

Keith reaches out and grabs his hand, not really thinking. When Lance looks up at him, his eyes are shining with unshed tears. “I’m sorry, Lance,” he says. “I hope you get to go home.”

“I hope you get to go home, too,” Lance says, smiling shakily. He visibly braces himself, clears his throat one last time, then asks, “What about you? Who’s missing you back at home?”

Keith grins, realizing suddenly that maybe he’s lucky in this way. He doesn’t have to worry about people back home missing him if he dies. Doesn’t have to worry about disappointing people who love him. “No one,” he says.

Lance frowns. “You can’t mean that,” he says.

“I do. I’m an orphan. No one misses me back home.”

Lance just stares at him, his mouth open. “So, like, you grew up in an orphanage?”

“We called it ‘the Home,’ back in Twelve,” Keith says. “I shared my room with this other boy. Had a knife tucked under my bed from my mother.”

“That’s a strange gift to leave a newborn,” Lance says, and Keith laughs, surprised.

“I know,” he says.

“But what about your friends?” Lance presses. “They’ll miss you.”

And even though Keith used a follow up question, he’s enough of an asshole to shut this one down. “Uh-uh,” he says. “It’s my turn now.”

“Jerk.”

“What about your friends?” Keith asks, because he already knows Lance is going to circle back around to the same question.

“If I make it out of here, my best friend is going to kill me just for volunteering,” Lance says, grinning. “Hunk’s the best friend a guy could ask for. This year was his last reaping, too.”

“Lucky him,” Keith says.

“Unlucky you,” Lance adds, because Keith almost made it. He would’ve been safe from the Hunger Games for the rest of his life after this year. “And?” Lance says. “What do you think your friends are thinking right now?”

“I don’t have any friends,” Keith finally admits. “I was quiet and angry a lot of the time. I got in fights. I didn’t talk to people.”

“The bad boy schtick lives on,” Lance says, smiling softly. “Except for the fact that you do have a friend.”

“Oh, really?” Keith asks, sarcastic.

“Really,” Lance says, and then points to himself, grinning. “I’m the next best thing you can get to Hunk.”

Keith smiles into his lap, too touched to say anything else.

The game goes on for hours. Lance asks Keith what he’ll do first if he wins (go back and find his knife) and Keith asks which Victor Lance would be most scared to be in the Games with (Pidge, though he claims Shiro is a close second).

They talk about everything. They admit that they wouldn’t be able to kill each other, if it came down to it. They talk about how they probably shouldn’t have become real friends, because it’ll be too hard to win without the other. They talk about their favorite colors and foods and least favorite Capitol mutts and most embarrassing memories.

The game finally ends when Lance asks, with his shoes off and his feet in the water, “Do you actually mind when I flirt with you?”

And Keith goes bright red and refuses to answer, which is an answer in and of itself, really. Because Lance stands up with the biggest grin on his face and he doesn’t even complain about the game being over as they go off to check their snares.

Keith just ignores his smiles and knowing looks. And if Lance says a few things that could be misconstrued as flirting, things which he would normally teasingly apologize for, well. Keith doesn’t say anything about it. And Lance doesn’t end up apologizing, either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another thing i 10/10 would recommend: checking out @bluegaysonly / @jacecares to read the finished fic!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi guys!!! i'm back!!!!
> 
> first of all, i wanna offer a HUGE thanks to eli for helping me out 🥺 literally saved my life, i wouldn't have been able to upload these chapters otherwise while i was away. she cheered me on while i was writing this fic and gladly listened to my insanely long spiel as i explained how to use ao3 to a person who's never used ao3 before. (now i've got her reading fics on here other than just my own!! it's a plus in that i'm dragging her forcefully further and further into fandom culture every day and a minus in that it's her job as my best friend to think My Writing is the best writing she's ever seen 😤 and now i've got her reading some of my favorite fics 🥵)
> 
> and second -- i cannot thank you guys enough!!! your comments honestly truly gave me life while i was away. i appreciate all the kind things/excited screaming you had to say :'))) sorry for not responding to them, i never would've had the time with how busy we were, but i'll be responding again from this chapter forward!!! if you had any pressing questions that i missed/couldn't answer, feel free to throw them at me again !!
> 
> anyway, in case u were curious and since i couldn't really explain beforehand: i enlisted in the army national guard when i started college bc i be Broke af and didn't know how else pay for it. most of the time it's just monthly drills where we go and train, but after the crazy schnaz at the capitol my unit got called up to go to DC. i just got home this week and now i'm catching up on school/work/fics/life 🤪 
> 
> finally: this chapter has smut in it aldksjf. please enjoy!!!

Something feels different between them, after that stupid game. Keith tries to ignore it — his attention should be solely focused on the game that actually matters, anyway — but it’s impossible.

His thoughts keep tripping over their questions and answers from earlier. He hears himself admitting that Lance was his first kiss. Finds himself imagining what that must’ve sounded like from Lance’s perspective, knowing that that whole spectacle, that moment of pretend, had been a first for Keith.

He thinks about the things he and Lance admitted to each other — and the whole world. About Lance’s sacrifice in volunteering for the Games. About Lance deciding that he was Keith’s friend.

He thinks about his own alarmingly revealing lack of an answer. About how despite his own insistences, he can’t quite say he minds Lance’s flirting. Can’t quite claim he doesn’t _enjoy_ them, wouldn’t revel in them out in the real world.

He imagines what it would be like, out there. If he were still in Twelve and Lance just happened to be there too. He’d be covered in coal dust, just like everyone else there, but that’s about the only change Keith can imagine in him. He’d still be incredibly witty. Still stupidly charming.

Hopefully, he’d still be equally as interested in Keith. And, as opposed to here in the Games, Keith wouldn’t have rejected his flirting from the offset. He’d probably have been a blushing, stuttering mess.

Even now, when Keith thinks about the shit they talked about for too long, he feels himself blushing. And the thought that it might be visible, that he might be on camera at any given moment, that the viewers might be seeing his embarrassment and enjoying it… Fuck. It just makes him blush harder.

By the time the sun disappears below the horizon, fall has arrived. It’s even colder than last time, and Keith shivers as he keeps watch, trying to keep his thoughts at bay as he sits against a tree a foot away from Lance, his knees hugged close to his chest.

Barely fifteen minutes pass before Lance sighs loudly. He crawls out of his sleeping back, situates himself beside Keith, and wraps the sleeping back around them both.

He falls asleep just like that, sitting up with his head resting on Keith’s shoulder. Keith is warm immediately, and he finds he has no trouble staying awake, counting Lance’s quiet breaths into the hours of the night.

\--

Lance whistles, long and low, and Keith can’t help but agree.

“I really hope you’re right about this,” Lance says, his hands on his hips and his head tilted back. The mountains look much bigger like this, standing at the base of them. A steep incline across hardened ground, grass already covered with frost despite winter not yet being upon them. They’ve already donned their hat and gloves (Keith has the hat, at the moment), and Keith’s not entirely sure if he _is_ right anymore.

Either it’s this cold everywhere, or the cold weather is more intense on the mountains. If they can find a cave, they’ll be able to light a fire without much threat of being seen. They’ll be able to escape from the wind and will spend their winter day in a state much less horrible than it could be.

If Keith’s wrong, on the other hand, they could freeze to death. There’s not much to offer on the mountains — sparse patches of trees, areas you can’t cross without climbing straight up. If there isn’t any shelter here, they’ll just be out in the open, at mercy to the elements and any other tributes.

“Me too,” Keith mutters, staring up the mountain in trepidation. And Lance — not one to hesitate much — starts up the damn thing without another word. Keith follows in suit, because it was his idea in the first place.

It’s exhausting. Hours of walking and climbing despite much less distance put behind them. Keith would be more worried about the Gamemakers starting something to spice things up, but they tend to let the tributes fight it out a bit longer themselves, once it’s down to ten people.

They’ll be safe from any tricks for another day or two. If they haven’t heard a canon by then, they’ll probably need to start being wary. Start looking out for mutts or even hunting down other tributes, just to keep the Game in their hands.

There’s another reason Keith isn’t too worried, of course.

The main appeal of the Games for the Capitol is the killing. It’s watching kids fight to the death, live through situations they never could, use their wits and strength to survive and then die.

Despite this, there’s usually something extra. Certain tributes that usually earn more attention, for whatever reason.

The Gamemakers love to show the Careers, for example. Keith’s watched many Games where, when the tensions aren’t that high, the cameras will stick with the Careers for a while. Let the audience tune into their conversations. It allows the viewers to see them being friends. It adds more intrigue for whenever they start bickering, usually when the number of tributes starts creeping down a little too low. It makes for all the more entertainment when they finally turn on each other.

But it’s not always the Careers. Some years, it’s other players. Usually allies. Sometimes tributes with a vendetta against each other, the cameras switching between the two of them often, showing the traps they laid for each other and the ways they escaped one another.

A couple years ago, it was two tributes from the same District. A boy and a girl who’d been enemies at home, and who spent the Games trying to kill one another.

For these reasons, Keith suspects that he and Lance might be the tributes garnering the extra attention this year. Two tributes from different Districts, partnering up with only each other. It’ll be extra entertaining because Keith’s from Twelve — the embarrassment of a District, the District which rarely ever makes it into the final fifteen, much less the final ten — and Lance, a Career tribute who turned on his fellow Careers.

And, to top it all off, they have a romantic interest in each other.

So, yeah. Keith isn’t too worried about Gamemaker tricks right now. He figures viewership is probably up, the viewers themselves entertained. It certainly helps that Lance is good at carrying a conversation. He says things that not only make Keith laugh, but probably have people back home laughing as well.

They eat some squirrel and berries that they gathered yesterday while they walk. Conversation is idle, because the trek is tiring and they’re both pretty breathless.

“What’s that?” Lance asks, just as the sun is beginning to set over the mountains. Keith has realized that not only is the weather changing rapidly with every day, the actual lengths of the days are changing with them, just like in real life.

“What?”

“There,” Lance says. They’re approaching another part of the mountain that they’ll have to climb, unless they want to travel an hour or so to the north in hopes of finding a more passable area. But instead of looking to the top of the sheer side of the cliff, Keith looks at the base of it. At the pattern of the rocks. At the slim parting between two of the rocks, the dark crevice between them.

They share a look full of excitement and hope, and then they’re hurrying. Energy returning to them after hours of dragging feet, the two of them pressing on because they’d already made it so far and didn’t want to give up yet.

Lance reaches it first. He slips his bag off and slides between the rocks without hesitation, not even stopping to think about what could be inside. Keith’s hesitating outside, thinking that Lance might’ve just made a fatal mistake, when Lance calls, “Keith! Get in here!”

And so Keith follows, transferring his bag to his hand just like Lance did.

It’s a tight squeeze between the rocks, which press tightly against him as he slides between them, feeling more and more claustrophobic as he does, until he emerges on the other side. The cave is spacious despite the small entrance, and Lance is standing in the middle of it, his arms splayed wide and a smile on his face.

“Welcome to our humble abode,” he says, and then immediately drops to the ground. He lets out a groan as he lays back, using his bag as a pillow.

“We should start a fire,” Keith suggests. “The entrance is small, and if we light it toward the back, I doubt anyone will see its light.”

“You should start a fire,” Lance says, “and let me lay here and watch you work.”

Keith scoffs, but he doesn’t argue. There’s a good armful of scattered branches in the cave, hopefully put there by the Gamemakers and not other tributes. Lance has matches in his bag, as well, and Keith’s willing to waste one rather than spend who knows how long trying to start a fire on his own.

So he builds the fire while Lance lays there, eventually flipping over onto his stomach and watching Keith like he promised to. By the time Keith’s done, Lance has stood up and spread out their remaining sleeping bag, producing more squirrel meat as well.

It’s considerably warmer in the cave than it is outside, and despite the hard climb to get here, Keith is feeling especially proud. He feels safer than he ever has during the Games so far, and Lance seems to be feeling the same way. He seems to be smiling easier, laughing louder, though Keith hadn’t realized he was acting more reserved until he sees him acting normally now.

“What was the Home like?” Lance asks, sometime later after they’ve finished eating and the fire has begun burning low. They’ll have to go out and collect more wood tomorrow. It’ll probably get chilly during the night.

“Is this another game of Truth?”

“It could be,” Lance says. “If you want to play.”

“Sure,” Keith says. He’s beginning to feel a little sleepy, and he figures they’ll probably fall asleep before they can get to any questions he doesn’t want to answer.

“So? What was it like?”

Keith shrugs. “Not a happy place. Nobody’s really well-off in Twelve, but those of us who are orphans… well, there’s not a lot of money for us. I don’t think I ever ate three meals a day before the Capitol. And everyone had to take tesserae once we were old enough. Our food went straight to the orphanage.”

“Wow,” Lance breathes.

“There were a lot of us,” Keith continues. “It was crowded, and loud, and most of us were angry. The adults never bothered to break up the fights.”

He tells Lance this story from when he was eight years old. How he was caught stealing extra rice at dinner. How he was subsequently beaten, so sore the next day when he went to school. How none of the teachers cared, or even cast him a second look.

“What was it like at your home?”

Lance smiles. It looks soft in the flickering light of the fire, happy and sad at the same time. “It was loud there, too,” he says. “Happy, though. There were a lot of us, and money was hard, but we loved each other. We’d go swimming a lot. And we’d play games as a family in the living room at night.”

He tells Keith about the time he “ran away from home” when his sister was mean to him, but really he just ran to Hunk’s house. Hunk’s parents called Lance’s immediately, and Lance’s parents allowed him to spend the night. Lance hadn’t known that, though, had assumed he was successful, and yet the next day he was homesick.

He returned with tears in his eyes, apologizing to his parents for running away. They told him they were worried sick, that they thought they’d never see him again, and Lance had believed them. It was a funny story they liked to tell even years later.

And then Keith tells Lance about how he was kicked out of school. He tells him he picked a fight with a boy who was rude to him all his life. A boy who’d made fun of him for being an orphan, made fun of him for how he dressed. How one day he’d made a comment about Keith’s mother, someone neither of them had ever known, but Keith had taken it to heart anyway.

How he’d pushed the other boy to the ground and sat on his chest as he’d punched his face. How he’d never returned to school after that, and instead of spending all day in the Home, he’d walk around for hours, visiting the shops he could never afford and traipsing through the meadows, spending hours on his own, planning how he would make money, how he would make a life for himself.

Lance talks about learning to swim and fish. Keith talks about what they learned about coal mining in school. Lance shares his mom’s famous pie recipe, and Keith shares the most lucrative trade he’d ever made in the Hob (one squirrel for a whole bottle of spirits, which Keith had drank for the very first time alone in a field, wondering what all the excitement was about).

“Can I kiss you?” Lance asks, once the fire is just embers, and for a second Keith thinks, _I thought we’d have fallen asleep by now_.

But then he realizes he doesn’t mind. That the answer is _yes_. And so he says it.

Lance’s eyes widen. He’s clearly surprised, clearly didn’t expect it to work, but he wastes no time after Keith accepts his offer.

With one hand on the ground for balance, he leans toward Keith and tilts his face closer. Keith closes his eyes just in time, and this time the kiss is softer. Longer.

It isn’t just a peck, over almost as soon as it begins. Lance’s lips move against his, and Keith gasps when Lance tugs his hair the slightest amount.

And then Lance is moving, maneuvering himself onto Keith’s lap. Gripping his face with both hands as he tilts Keith’s head upward, coaxing his mouth open as he introduces his tongue. Keith reciprocates as best as he can, trying to copy Lance’s movements, his hands digging into his hips as he holds on tight.

The fire dies and they’re still kissing. Wind blows into the cave, and it’s chilly, and somehow without even talking about it, they both end up inside Keith’s sleeping bag. They’re wrapped around each other, laying on their sides with legs intertwined and Lance pressing kisses to Keith’s lips, his ear, his throat.

It surprises them both when Keith lets out a little moan, Lance having sucked on the hollow of his throat.

“Do you think the cameras are still on us?” Lance whispers, as if the microphones won’t pick it up if they are.

“I don’t know,” Keith whispers back anyway. He realizes then that he can feel Lance against him, hard against his hip. And he’s hard too. His face is flushed, not that he thinks Lance can see it in the darkness of the cave.

“They can’t be,” Lance says. “Right? They wouldn’t show this?”

Keith huffs out a laugh. “What’s ‘this’?” he asks. He thinks he knows.

“ _This_ ,” Lance answers, grinding against him, and they both giggle like the teenagers they are in the privacy of the cave.

“I don’t know,” Keith repeats. Lance presses closer, his lips moving against Keith’s ear.

“Do you want to do this?” he asks, his fingers tracing patterns on Keith’s stomach. Keith can’t remember when Lance pressed his shirt up. “Or do you want to sleep?”

“I don’t want to sleep,” Keith says, evasive, and Lance chuckles into his ear. Places another kiss right under it.

“We don’t have to,” Lance continues, his hand stilling. “Not if you don’t want to.”

“I do,” Keith says, the words spilling out of his mouth in a rush. He realizes that he wants this. Like, _really_ wants this.

Not just because if he doesn’t do it now he might never do it at all, though that’s definitely a depressing thought. But more than that, he wants to do this with _Lance_.

He trusts him. He doesn’t think for a second that Lance could be tricking him, or using him, or lulling him into a false sense of security. He thinks that Lance just likes Keith as much as he likes him. That they’re just two boys, forced into this horrible, inhumane situation, and they want to feel alive. They want to feel normal.

“I want this,” Keith insists, and Lance kisses him again. On the mouth, this time, and Keith is quick to kiss him back. To show Lance that he really wants this, wants him.

“You’ve never done this before,” Lance murmurs against his mouth. It’s not a question, because he knows he’s right.

“I’ve done it on my own,” Keith protests, realizing immediately after speaking that that’s more embarrassing than saying nothing at all. Lance probably already assumed he’d done it on his own before. There was no need for Keith to say it.

And Keith is immediately proven right. He feels Lance’s grin against his lips, even though he can barely see him anymore, just his outline from the small amount of light creeping in through the entrance of the cave. “Oh, yeah?” he says. “Why don’t you tell me more about that?”

“Shut up.”

“I’m serious,” Lance says, laughing. “I want to know. How’d you manage when you shared your room with another boy?”

“Shut up,” Keith repeats, feeling himself blushing furiously now, and Lance’s laughter is silent. Keith can just feel it against his body, feel the chuckles emanating from Lance’s chest.

“Maybe you did it in those fields you talked about,” Lance ponders, still tracing Keith’s skin. His fingers are right above the waistband of his pants, now. “Hidden in tall grasses and staring at the sky. Thinking about how you’re probably fine, how unlikely it would be for someone to come across you. But still… _what if_?”

Keith’s breath hitches, and Lance uses that opportunity to slip the tips of his fingers just into Keith’s pants. It’s only a few millimeters of difference. Barely even a change at all. And yet it feels like miles.

“Or maybe,” Lance continues, not done torturing Keith yet, “you did it in your room anyway. Waiting ‘til your roommate was asleep. Laying in your bed in the dark, being as quiet as you could. Hoping he wouldn’t wake up.”

Keith moves, just barely. Arches his hips up a little, hoping Lance will move his hand further down.

He doesn’t.

“Maybe you did it for the first time after you were kicked out of school. Decided not to wander the streets for the day, but to stay in your room while your roommate was gone. To touch yourself in ways you never had before.”

Keith whimpers, and Lance ignores him. He must be amused with himself. Amused with the state he’s put Keith in.

“I bet you barely did it at all,” Lance says, his voice husky now. “Not enough privacy. Not enough alone time. Barely any chance to do it at all, really. Just a few quick, desperate times touching yourself, wishing you could do it more often. I bet you can count the number on your hands.”

“Lance!” Keith hisses. “Just touch me.”

“You’re sure you want me to?” Lance teases. “We’re still not sure about the cameras.”

“They’re probably not watching…” Keith reasons. “And if the cameras are on, everyone’s probably asleep.”

“Unless it’s not nighttime for them,” Lance says, and Keith thinks he knows what he wants him to say. Thinks he knows what will get Lance to actually, finally touch him.

“I don’t care,” he says. “I don’t care if they’re watching, Lance, just — please. Please, touch me, Lance, I want — I just — I can’t—”

Lance, apparently finally amused enough to give in, slides his hand the rest of the way into Keith’s pants. His fingers wrap comfortably around Keith’s cock, as if he’s done it a million times before. But Keith reacts as if it’s his first time, because it is.

He moans, arching into Lance’s fist immediately, his fingers curled in the sleeping bag beneath him. He’s laying flat on his back, and Lance is on his side, his head now propped up with a hand as he gazes down at Keith’s face, not that he can see much.

Unless he can.

Unless the light is illuminating Keith better, seeing as he’s not the one who’s backlit right now.

Keith’s already breathing faster. Shaking a little, just from desire and how long he’s waited, with Lance rambling on and on in an attempt to work him up even more. And it worked, and Lance knows it.

“What do you want?” Lance says, his hand completely still.

“Anything,” Keith says. His eyes are wide in the darkness of the cave, desperately trying to see Lance clearly. He wishes the fire was still burning, except maybe it’s better that it’s not. At least this way, if the cameras really are on them, they won’t be able to see them clearly. “Just move your hand.”

So Lance does, his touch so soft and gentle that it’s barely even there, but Keith can’t find it in himself to care. He knows Lance is teasing him, but he must be enjoying this as much as Keith is. He wouldn’t be acting this way if he wasn’t.

Still… that doesn’t mean Keith can’t make him a little more desperate, too.

So while Lance is doing his best to tease Keith, using gentle fingers up and down his cock, Keith grabs Lance through his pants and squeezes.

Lance gasps directly in Keith’s ear, jerking a little in his hand, and Keith grins.

“What do _you_ want?” he asks.

“For both of us to take off our fucking pants,” Lance breathes, and so they do. There’s a moment of scrambling under the sleeping bag. It’s really not meant for two people, so they knock knees several times — even bump their heads, once — and then they’re both giggling madly, kicking their pants and underwear to the bottom of the bag. Keith doesn’t doubt that they’re going to mix them up later, but he doesn’t even care. He thinks he’ll get a kick out of watching Lance try to pull on pants that are too short.

It feels much more real, all the sudden, with neither of them wearing anything from the waist down. He can feel Lance’s bare leg against his own, _hot_ against his own skin, and that’s before Lance decides to roll on top of him, pinning him with his own body.

He has his arms on either side of Keith’s head, his legs bracketing Keith’s, and he drops down to kiss him on the lips before pulling away. Keith can feel everything — they’re pressed tightly together, and Lance’s cock feels warm and hard against his. He moves his hips, a tentative thrust at first, and they both let out these sighs at the exact same time.

“Yeah,” Lance says, breathless. “Just like that.”

He dives in for another kiss and this time he doesn’t stop. It’s gentle at first, slow and sweet, and then Keith thrusts up into Lance a second time and everything changes. It becomes hot and fast, their kisses sloppy as Lance begins to grind down on him steadily. It’s not as controlled as his own hand (which has touched his own dick _more_ than what he can count on his own hands, thank you very much) but it feels better, somehow.

Maybe just because it’s happening with someone else. Because each gasp is for ears other than just his own, swallowed down immediately and then returned in kind. Everything he feels is something Lance is feeling as well, and that makes it a hundred times better. Makes him a hundred times more desperate.

“God,” Lance murmurs. “You’re unbelievable.”

“That bad, huh?” Keith jokes, except he’s secretly scared it’s true.

Lance laughs, though, and Keith can feel him shake his head. “Not at all,” he promises. “You feel so good. I don’t think I’ve ever been this turned on.”

“I’m sure you tell all of your lovers that,” Keith responds. He chokes on his breath when Lance grinds down hard and slow after that, their sweat and precum slicking the way.

“Only my virgin, orphan, knife-throwing, bad boy lovers,” Lance responds.

Keith laughs, and he never imagined it like this. Never imagined sex to be something that could be funny and light-hearted and _fun_. “And here I was thinking I was one of a kind.”

“You are,” Lance promises, his voice suddenly soft, and his lips skate down Keith’s neck. They find the sensitive skin by the hollow of his throat and get to work, sucking and licking and biting, and Keith can’t even control the noises he’s making anymore. He has no idea how Lance can multitask so well, can kiss him like this while keeping up his rhythm at the same time. It’s impressive and attractive and Keith never wants to let him go. He never wants this to end.

A minute later — or maybe two or three, Keith honestly can’t keep track of time — Lance says, “That might be visible tomorrow.” He sounds a little bit abashed, a little bit proud.

“The other tributes will think I’m a slut.”

“And the viewers will know just what you were doing.”

Keith moans, not expecting the thought to turn him on.

Lance rolls off of Keith, then, facing him on his side and says, “C’mere.” So Keith rolls over to meet him, and then Lance has his hand around both of them. He’s stroking faster, like he actually means it this time, and it drives the capability of speech out of Keith’s mind.

He just lays there, curled around Lance’s fist and panting into his shoulder, occasionally bucking into Lance’s hand. He pulls Lance’s leg over his waist, plants his hands on his chest, touches his arms and stomach and neck — anything he can reach.

All the while, Lance is stroking him. They’re both getting closer, both gasping into the space between them, when Lance gets the idea to change things up again.

“Flip over,” he whispers, so Keith turns to his other side without question and Lance scoots up behind him. He’s jerking Keith off alone, now, but he’s grinding up against his ass as he does. On one stroke, his cock slips between Keith’s thighs, and they both moan. Lance does it on purpose after that, his hand flying over Keith’s cock.

“Lance,” he gasps. “I’m — _ah!_ — I’m close!”

“Me too, sweetheart,” Lance murmurs, and somehow _that’s_ what does it. The cheesiest, dopiest pet name Keith has ever heard. He doesn’t get the chance to muffle his moans, curled around Lance’s fist and jerking into it sporadically.

Lance follows close behind, his cum adding to the wetness between Keith’s legs, and it should be gross. It probably _is_ gross. Surely, he’ll think it’s gross in the next few minutes. But at the moment, he doesn’t care. At the moment, he’s listening to Lance gasp behind him, feels his breaths against the back of his neck, and it’s the hottest thing he’s ever experienced.

Immediately after, Lance pulls him in even closer, if possible. It’s hot and sweaty in the sleeping bag but Keith’s face is still chilled from the air in the cave, and it feels great. He intertwines his fingers with Lance’s and lets his eyes slip shut.

“Was that okay?” Lance asks, a minute or two later, when they’ve both caught their breath.

“More than,” Keith promises. And then, “Hey, Lance?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you actually think the cameras were on us?”

Lance laughs. “No way,” he says. “I’m sure they cut away. Showed the other tributes sleeping or something.”

“Yeah,” Keith agrees. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

They decide not to take shifts that night, feeling pretty secure in their location, and Keith drifts off to sleep easily, enveloped in Lance’s warmth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you liked it!!! as always, if you want to read the rest of this thing in one go (PLUS be a part of the people leaving the prompts that will guide my next daily-update fic!!) go check out my twitter: @jacecares / @bluegaysonly !!!
> 
> hope you've all had a lovely last couple of weeks and are doing well!!! <33


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW. i totally forgot to upload this on monday, i'm so sorry guys!!! i had a huge interview for a job that day and forgot about literally everything else in my life 🥵 sorry for the late update and ty for your patience!!!

Lance is still sleeping when Keith slips out of the sleeping bag the next morning. Winter has arrived in force, the frigid air invading the cave easily, and he scrounges around in the sleeping bag for his pants and underwear before leaving the cave, needing to take a piss.

The second he steps outside, he forgets that it’s winter in the arena. His entire body grows hot, heat flooding his face and numbing the rest of him.

Waiting in front of the cave is at _least_ twenty parachutes. And Keith can only think of one thing they could’ve done to garner this number of gifts from the sponsors.

Keith debates just leaving them there, too embarrassed to take them all back inside, but if anyone else saw them, they’d know for sure that there are tributes hiding in the cave. Plus, Keith doesn’t want anyone else to get these supplies, whatever they are.

So he gathers as many as he can in his hands, having to make two trips to get them all, and lets them fall loudly to the ground at the front of the cave.

Lance jerks awake, sitting up quickly, but he smiles when he spots Keith.

“Morning,” he says sleepily, rubbing his eyes.

Keith kicks a parachute at him. Lance watches, and then seems to notice the pile surrounding Keith’s feet.

“Oh, shit,” he says, and then bursts into laughter.

“It’s not funny!” Keith protests.

“It’s kind of funny,” Lance argues, ducking at exactly the right time to avoid the container being thrown at his head.

While Keith pouts, Lance goes through the gifts from their sponsors.

Plenty of food. Some random medicine, in case they need it. A second hat and pair of gloves. A fucking _condom_.

Lance ends up on the floor, cackling when he sees that, and Keith’s run out of things to throw at him.

It takes them twenty minutes to even get out of the cave, in between Lance’s bursts of giggles and Keith trying desperately to ignore him, stubbornly serving them both soup from the sponsors. This time, they both wear their own hat and gloves. And when Keith catches Lance staring at his neck, he zips his jacket up as high as he can with a glower.

The outside is freezing — the cold so biting that it hurts where their faces are left bare. Even still, Lance somehow manages to be in a good mood. Bumping amicably into Keith with every other step. Chatting his ear off and looping their arms together and even singing under his breath, at one point.

Try as he might, Keith can’t help being endeared, tucking his smile into the collar of his jacket.

They wind up at a small copse of trees. It’ll be hard to find any branches worth burning, with all this snow covering the ground, but they’re determined to try anyway.

Keith offers to start looking, meanwhile Lance is tasked with setting a few snares. Sure, they have food right now thanks to the sponsors, but they figure it’s better to be prepared.

While Lance wanders off, Keith starts digging through the snow at the base of the trees. His gloves get soaked almost instantly, but Keith hardly even notices. He’s too distracted by his own mind.

Because he’s realizing more and more that… God. He really cares about Lance.

And it’s not fair at all, is it? That they were born to the Districts. That they’ve been forced to play the Hunger Games, rewarded for their affections toward each other but still expected to suffer, to either die or live without the other. He hates the Capitol and all the people there. He hates the president, and the Games, and even the Districts. Not the people in them, but the fact that they’re separated, removed from one another. Why in the world do they live like this?

Even as Keith tries to distract himself with his task, he can’t help the growing bundle of anxiety and despair taking up room inside his chest. Because Lance is the first friend he’s ever had. He’s the first person Keith has ever cared about in this way. The first person who has ever looked out for Keith. Who’s said jokes solely for his benefit. Who’s taken measures to make sure he’s safe.

And at the end of all of this, Keith is going to lose him.

Or, perhaps more likely… Lance is going to lose Keith.

Because no matter how Keith looks at it, Lance is the one who deserves to go home, right? He’s the one with the huge family. The huge family with kids and grandparents and not enough money, and Lance could provide for them. They would be safe and happy for the rest of their lives, and Lance might have nightmares about the Games, he might sometimes think about Keith, that guy he befriended in the arena, but it won’t crush him the same way it would crush Keith.

Lance would have his friends back home, his family. He’d have all the support he could get, and Keith doesn’t doubt that he’d be able to move on. Remember their night in the cave fondly, maybe, but still find someone else.

But Keith…

He’d be going home alone. An orphan, the Victor of the Hunger Games, more alone than ever. He’d live by himself in his big house in the Victors’ Village. Shiro would be his neighbor, and maybe they’d become friends. Maybe they’d bond over their shared horror of experiencing the Hunger Games.

But Keith would always be alone. He’d always be thinking about Lance, remembering him and his death and regretting everything, surely. Missing him and wishing that Lance had won instead.

Keith doesn’t want to die by any means, but if only one of them had the chance to live, he thinks the decision would be easy.

That thought scares him. Coming into the Games, Lance was the one he hated the most. He didn’t trust him at all. Had thought Lance might kill him in his sleep. All he’d wanted was to get through the Games by any means necessary, and now he’s not so sure he can do that.

He won’t tell Lance, he decides. He’ll help him get as close to the end as he can. After that, it’ll be up to Lance.

“Keith!” Lance shouts, and Keith jerks out of his reverie, realizing he’s holding a bundle of sticks. His attention immediately goes to Lance, but Lance is sprinting toward him, looking behind him.

Keith whirls around at the last second, just in time to see a girl standing amongst the trees, wielding a crossbow. He ducks as her arrow flies, and as Keith lands on the ground, a trident sails over his head. Impales itself in her chest.

She’s dead instantly, the boom registering to Keith distantly, and he gets back up and turns to face Lance. Turns to see Lance standing there, his face pale, an arrow embedded in his chest.

“Lance!” Keith drops his bundle of sticks, somehow having managed to hold onto them this whole time, and stumbles toward him. Lance looks dazed, but he’s somehow still on his feet. “Lance, fuck, oh my God.” He was the one who was supposed to live. Keith just decided it, he was so determined to save him, and Lance took an arrow that was supposed to be his.

“Keith,” Lance mutters. “It missed my heart.”

“What?” the word comes out choked and disjointed. Keith realizes he’s crying, though the tears freeze before they can make it far.

“Mom’s a doctor,” Lance says, quieter still. He touches his chest. “The heart’s over here. Think she missed my lung, too…” He starts breathing faster, his eyes a little glassy, and Keith realizes he’s going into shock. That maybe he could survive this, were an actual doctor here, but Keith can’t possibly do anything to save him if Lance goes into shock. If he can’t coach Keith through it.

“Back to the cave,” Keith says. “We’ll go back to the cave. We have medical supplies.”

“Trident,” Lance whispers.

“Lance, there’s no time—”

“Trident!” Lance insists, so Keith runs. He yanks the trident out of the girl, hardly registering what he’s doing, and returns to Lance’s side just as he begins to collapse.

It takes more maneuvering than Keith would like, but he’s glad they decided to leave their bags in the cave. He straps the trident through his belt, despite the fact that it’s much too big to really fit there, and picks Lance up in a fireman carry.

Now that some of the sheer panic has left Keith, he realizes that the arrow is closer to Lance’s shoulder than his chest. Maybe it would’ve been a deadly shot had the girl actually hit Keith, but her aim was way off for Lance. And if the arrow missed both his heart and his lungs, then maybe Lance will be all right, so long as he doesn’t bleed out.

Despite Keith’s efforts to keep him awake by talking to him, Lance passes out, likely from the pain. It’s an agonizing trek back to their cave, because Lance is heavier than he looks and his blood is hot on Keith’s shoulder and it’s all uphill, but he makes it without even setting Lance down.

Getting into the cave is a different story, though Keith manages to do it by pulling Lance through, fearing that he’s worsening his injury all the while. He puts him down on his side, not wanting him to lay on the arrow, and starts scouring through their medical supplies.

Gauze. Stitches. Even some tubes of cream — hopefully the good Capitol stuff that promotes faster healing.

Still, Keith doesn’t know if that’s enough. Doesn’t know how to do any of this at all, actually. Will Lance be okay if he pulls out the arrow? Will it be enough to stitch him up? Is there some kind of complicated thing Keith is supposed to know or do?

The panic starts to rear its head again, demanding his attention, but Keith decides he’s just going to have to do his best. If he’s lucky, Lance will wake up soon and be able to coach him through it, or at least tell him how to fix it afterwards.

Then again, it’s probably better that he isn’t awake for this part, anyway. Keith can’t imagine how painful it’ll be to pull out the arrow.

He uses his knife to cut off the back end of the arrow, cringing with every sawing motion through the wood. He imagines Lance can feel the vibrations through his body, aggravating his wound even further.

When the back end finally snaps off, he straddles Lance’s hip, one hand with a firm grip on his shoulder and the other wrapped just under the arrowhead.

“One,” he whispers, adjusting and then readjusting his grip on the arrow. Looking between Lance’s face and the arrow through his body, the blood seeping from the wound.

“Two…” he says, breathing hard through his nose, trying not to think of the consequences of if he messes up.

“ _Three_!” Keith yanks the arrow out, registering Lance’s pained yell in the back of his mind as the forefront focuses on the newfound horror of blood gushing out of his wound, much too quickly. Keith’s hands are shaking, his resolve crumbling, but he refuses to let Lance die. Not like this.

Shaking, he presses his hand to Lance’s chest, trying in vain to keep his blood inside as he scrambles with his free hand for the medical supplies.

“Keith,” Lance rasps, and it’s then that Keith remembers that Lance screamed in pain, that he’s awake now.

“It’s okay,” Keith promises. “I’ve got you. We can treat this.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t,” Lance says, his voice quiet, and Keith is so surprised that his grip goes slack. He feels the warmth of Lance’s blood slipping between his fingers.

“What?”

“There’s only nine of us left, sweetheart,” Lance says, smiling sadly. “Eight, if you just let go.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“ _You_ don’t be stupid,” Lance says. “You can win — I know you can.”

“Shut up,” Keith says. “Just — just tell me how to fix you.”

“Keith…”

“I’m serious, Lance. You coach me through this or I’ll just do my best, whether you like it or not.”

Lance sighs, the sound heavy and sad, but he nods. “Fine,” he says. “First of all, there’s an exit wound. You’re forgetting about that as you keep pressure on my chest.”

Keith pales, realizing that blood has been running freely down Lance’s back the whole time. Despite his injury, Lance manages to laugh.

“I’ll keep pressure on this one,” he says, placing his hand over Keith’s. When Keith moves his hand, he does as he promised. “Clean it first, and then stitch it to be safe. It doesn’t matter if it looks pretty — any kind of stitch will do.”

Keith follows Lance’s instructions. Listens to his quiet, calming voice and begins to feel calm himself. He cleans Lance’s wounds, stitches them without a complaint from Lance, and lathers them in the cream from their sponsors. He patches both the entry and exit wounds with gauze, and afterwards, he props Lance against the wall and gets him to eat soup.

“You’re stupid, you know that?” Lance says. His tone belies his words, and his expression is fond.

“So are you,” Keith scoffs. “Thinking I’d just let you die.”

“It wouldn’t have been your fault,” Lance says. “You could’ve won without guilt.”

“You have a family at home, Lance,” Keith says. “You can’t give up. Especially not for me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, you can check out my twitters (@jacecares / @bluegaysonly) if you want to read the rest of the story now!
> 
> and if you were curious, i got the job i interviewed for!!! i now have the top position at the newspaper at my college 😌✨ 
> 
> hope you've all had a good week so far!!! <333


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys!!! here's a lil ~Middle Of The Night Update~ bc i realized it was monday and thought i might as well ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ i hope you enjoy!!!

That night, Keith wakes to the sound of sniffling. It takes a moment for it to register, his mind foggy with sleep, but after blinking a few times he’s sure of what he’s hearing.

“Lance?” he whispers, rolling onto his side. The sound stops abruptly, though Keith can make out the lump that is Lance in the sleeping bag, facing away from him. “Are you in pain?”

“No,” Lance says. “I’m fine. Go back to sleep.”

“If it hurts, I can apply more medicine,” Keith says, sitting up now.

“It’s not that. It’s stupid,” Lance says.

“I doubt it’s stupid,” Keith says. “Whatever it is, you can tell me.”

Lance huffs, sitting up and grinding the heels of his palms into his eyes. “You’re going to think I’m ridiculous,” he says, and then laughs. It sounds pained.

Keith scoots closer, tentatively putting his hand on Lance’s thigh. “I won’t,” he promises.

Lance is silent for a minute, still just sitting there, hunched over. Finally, he says, “That girl. District 7.” Keith remains silent, not even having realized which District the girl was from. “She was the first person I actually killed in here.”

“Lance…”

“I know, it’s stupid,” Lance says in a rush. “That’s what we’re here for. But I just — it didn’t really hit me ‘til just now. That I killed her.”

“It wasn’t personal,” Keith soothes. “That’s what we’re all doing in here.”

“I know. I hate it.”

Keith rubs his back. The cameras have probably shifted elsewhere, despite the entertainment two tributes talking in the middle of the night provides. They won’t want the Districts to hear this sentiment, this guilt.

“I’m sorry, Lance. But… I’m glad it was you, over her. I’m glad you’re alive.”

Lance melts into his side, letting his head rest on Keith’s shoulder. At some point, he murmurs a request — asks Keith to tell him a story — and Keith obliges, unbidden.

He weaves a tale about two princes of enemy nations, except they live in space. He talks about boats that can soar through the air, that venture to unknown planets full of alien civilizations. In the story, the princes overcome their difference to fight a common enemy, and they fall in love. He doesn’t quite know where the words are coming from, he’s definitely never read a story like this one before, but he lets his imagination run wild, anyway.

When he’s finished, the two princes having professed their love, Lance presses a kiss to his shoulder. “You make me wish I liked reading,” he whispers. “That was a great story.”

“Really?” Keith says, self-conscious now. “I made the whole thing up.”

“It was great. I wish you could read to me.”

“Me too,” Keith admits, realizing it’s true.

Lance falls asleep shortly after, meanwhile Keith can’t help staying up a while later, lying there and imagining a different life. One where he and Lance might be the space princes. Free from the Games, free from Panem. They’d travel amongst the stars and Keith would read Lance books in the evenings. They’d stay up late just talking about anything and their biggest worries would be how to spend their day, not whether they’d live through it.

Keith forces himself to fall asleep, after that. He realizes it hurts too much to imagine another life.

\--

Morning comes as the world caves in.

At first, Keith thinks it’s an earthquake. His shout wakes Lance, and there’s no time to check his wounds, to make sure he’s up for running, because they have to. They each manage to grab their bags, but the sleeping bag is left behind along with a number of forgotten supplies — Keith can only hope one of them has Lance’s medicine.

They squeeze their way out of the cave’s entrance, sparing a single moment to examine the terrain around them.

It isn’t the world that’s shaking, but the mountain. Spring, instead of getting rid of the snow, has sent it tumbling down the mountain. Above them, chunks of the mountain appear to come loose, sliding down its surface at white powder bursts into the air around them. It looks like a volcano eruption, but whereas Keith imagines that that would be a slow process, the lava likely trailing down the mountain, this looks impossibly fast. Impossibly deadly.

They take in the sight far above them in less than a second, and then they’re running. Feet dragging through the snow around them as they trip and stumble down the mountain. Part of Keith thinks they should turn back, hunker down in their cave, but who knows how long they’d be stuck in there? He’s never seen the mountain without snow, and if they were trapped in there for the rest of the Games, as the other tributes went on killing each other, they could be the last ones remaining.

Stuck in a cave together and forced to end it, one way or another.

In fact, Keith’s sure that that’s what would happen. The Gamemakers would make sure of it, upping the stakes between the other contestants to assure that the two of them would have to fight to the death before they could run out of food and die together.

No, Keith would much rather die trying to outrun an avalanche than because he’d convinced Lance to do it, to take on that emotional baggage for the rest of his life, so he wouldn’t have to.

Keith has seen videos of avalanches before, and they always seemed so quiet. Now, he realizes that that was because the videos were always taken from far away. Here, outrunning the avalanche itself, Keith can hear it acutely. The roaring of it behind them, though he doesn’t dare to look.

Seconds later, the air before them is white with disrupted snow. The ground is shaking and slipping beneath their feet, the snow sharp in their throats as they pant.

That’s when they reach a steeper portion of the mountain, obscured in the surrounding snow. Not noticing the change in elevation, Keith trips and falls, rolling down the mountain and bouncing painfully off of it. He loses Lance entirely, can only hope that he’s okay—

 _Boom_.

The mountain grows steeper, Keith tumbling farther, until he finally comes to a stop. He’s too exhausted, his nerves too shattered, to move. He lays there with his eyes closed, fully expecting to be buried under a pile of snow, suffocated in its cold clutches, when he realizes it’s silent.

A full minute later, Keith finds the strength to open his eyes. He’s in someplace completely unfamiliar to him, almost at the very bottom of the mountain, but in the distance, he can see the glint of the Cornucopia.

He and Lance should’ve come up with a plan to find each other if they were ever separated. It’s possible Keith could never see Lance again — and that’s if he wasn’t the person who died in the avalanche.

The thought of Lance just being dead, gone forever from his life, is enough of a panic-inducing thought that Keith forces himself to his feet, needing to be doing something. If he’s alive, there’s a good chance Lance is, too. They know for a fact that they weren’t the only ones on the mountain, thanks to the District 7 girl, so it’s entirely possible that it was someone else who was killed by the avalanche today. Someone higher up on the mountain than them.

Without putting much thought into it, Keith starts moving. He walks toward the south, in some kind of a daze, because he’s already been to the other biomes. The sea was the one he was least interested in going toward, but maybe Lance will think to go there, too. Maybe Lance will naturally be drawn to the sea. Maybe that’s why Keith’s heading there in the first place.

It isn’t until the adrenaline wears off that Keith realizes he’s sore all over. He only has his bag and the knives that were strapped to his belt. He has no idea if Lance managed to grab his trident, nor if Lance has any medicine left over. He can only hope that Lance — because he’s going to assume he’s alive until he sees his face in the sky — is healed enough for it not to matter either way.

The Capitol stuff is pretty good. There’s a chance Lance might be fine, even after only one application. He’ll probably heal slower, but he’s also probably not at risk of getting an infection. Hopefully his wounds didn’t reopen during the avalanche.

Food is scarce, but Keith isn’t all that hungry anyway. He’s too anxious to eat, and he supposes he’s lucky that it’s spring, now. Without a sleeping bag, he’d likely freeze to death on a fall or winter night.

There’s only eight of them left, now, which will be a big deal in the Capitol. Bets will be going like crazy, and the price of gifts from sponsors will skyrocket. They’ll be getting equal screen time, the camera jumping around between them all as they narrate what they’re doing. There’ll probably be recaps, too.

They’ll show their “best” kills, their narrowest survivals. They’ll show the parts that viewers were most excited about when they first happened. The deaths will probably be more dramatic from here on out, deliberately drawn out for the viewers’ pleasure.

That’s when another boom goes off.

Keith feels the blood drain from his face. He can’t even force himself to keep walking, even though the victor of whatever fight just happened could be nearby — he has no way of knowing.

But he sinks to the ground, forcing himself to breathe normally and not hyperventilate. He sticks his head between his knees, his fingers laced behind his head, and just sits there, feeling his whole body shaking.

Realistically, what are the chances that Lance is still alive?

He could have died in the avalanche. Keith still isn’t entirely sure how he managed to survive, but he figures he must’ve gotten lucky as he fell down that mountain. Avoided protruding rocks that could’ve speared him and fell down a steep enough slope that he cleared the range of the avalanche, rolling to safety.

Say, by some miracle, the same happened to Lance. Say they got separated, thrust down different paths of the mountain, and ended up in two entirely different, perfectly safe places. Say they were both alive right after that horrible experience.

Is it possible that Lance was forced to lay there, suffering under the pain of his wounds? Could they have reopened? Did he bleed out, laying in the snow?

Or did he get up, start in some new direction with the hopes that Keith, too, was alive? Did he limp along, having gotten injured even further in the avalanche’s aftermath?

Did he manage to survive all that, only to come in contact with another tribute and be killed?

Keith swallows, just imagining it. Lance… he could barely stand the one tribute he _did_ kill. What would he do, faced with another? Mere moments after the avalanche, after hearing the canon, probably wondering whether it was Keith’s death he’d bared witness to?

Would he even have the desire to fight anymore, if he thought Keith were gone?

Keith groans, feeling like he’s going insane. Unable to stop the endless cycle of his thoughts, and — well, he probably _is_ going insane.

How can anyone, realistically, remain sane in the Hunger Games? Even _after_ the Hunger Games?

If, by some miracle, he manages to survive this, he’ll never be the same. His life will be a waking nightmare, haunted with the lives he took and the perils he barely managed to survive. He’ll be a living ghost, mingling with the people and expected to act happy about it.

He’ll have to go to the aftergame interviews, smile and wave and joke and laugh. He’ll go home on the train, and the cameras will follow him. He’ll be taken to his new house, grand and luxurious. He’ll have more money than he ever could’ve imagined having, but he won’t enjoy spending it.

Blood money. That’s what it’ll be.

And what if he really is going insane? More than just the sad, traumatized kind. What if he’s imagining things? What if reality isn’t even real anymore?

That’s when Keith stands up again. Forces himself to keep walking. Because if he starts to question everything he experiences, then he really will go crazy, if he hasn’t already.

The day passes in a blur of Keith putting one foot in front of the other and not noticing when his stomach growls with hunger or his throat grows parched with thirst. Somehow, he doesn’t come across any other tributes. He just walks and walks and walks, and when the anthem plays, he plops down right there on the ground, uncaring that he’s out in the open.

It starts with the boy from 9 and Keith feels a tidal wave of relief. A laugh bursts out of him and he buries his head in his arms, unable to contain his grin. He should feel horrible, being so glad that this other tribute is dead, but he can’t help it.

It’s not Lance.

_It’s not Lance._

After that, it shows the boy from 11, and then the broadcast ends. Two tributes died today and neither of them were Lance.

He’s out there, somewhere. Maybe scared, maybe hurt, but now aware that Keith is alive, too. That it isn’t over. That they both made it through the day.

Keith makes an effort to better hide himself, after that. He ends up climbing a tree and hiding amongst its branches, making himself comfortable to the best of his ability, determined to survive. Determined to see Lance again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> feel free to check out my twitters to find the finished fic early! (@bluegaysonly / @jacecares)
> 
> also!!! i'm starting a daily update fic!! you can find a link to that on my twitter as well but i'll be uploading it here on ao3 daily once it's finished!


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys! hope you had a good week!! enjoy today's chapter! <33

As he walks, Keith chews on a rabbit. He caught it early in the morning, having woken up feeling invigorated and excited. He’s certain that Lance is looking for him, too. That he won’t care that there’s only seven of them left, now, either.

Keith even manages to catalogue the people left alive, though despite the number being so low, it still takes him a few minutes to figure it out. It would’ve taken Lance seconds.

But there’s Gem, from 1, and Glory from 2. That smart girl from 3, Robin. Both Lance and his district partner, Maisie. And then Keith and Rosie, who he hasn’t seen since the Cornucopia.

It isn’t until the sun is high in the sky that anything interesting happens to Keith. He supposes the Gamemakers have resisted forcing them all together because something is already happening somewhere else. Either that, or they’re making their ways closer to each other on their own.

Shortly after thinking this, Keith nearly walks into a clearing already occupied by two other tributes. So caught up in his own thoughts, he doesn’t hear their arguing until the last moment, stopping short just before he steps into view.

“It isn’t time!” a girl says shrilly. Keith peers carefully around the tree he’s standing behind, his heart beating a tattoo in his chest.

“How is it not time yet, Gem?!” Glory returns, looking furious. “There are only seven of us left!”

“And I _bet_ those two are still working together,” Gem says. “Lance and that Twelve freak.”

“So what?”

“ _So_ , we’d _both_ be at a disadvantage if we split up now, Glor,” she says. “We have to make sure they’re dead before we split up.”

“And what if they don’t die anytime soon?” Glory argues. “We can’t stick together anymore. There’s no way both of us can live, so it’s pointless.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Gem snaps. “There’s five people left who aren’t us. Working together, we have a better chance of living longer. It’s simple.”

“You know what else is simple?” Glory says, his voice scarily calm. Maybe Gem trusts him too much. Or maybe she’s too angry, too involved in the situation to see it coming. But Keith sees it form a mile away, the fury burning in Glory’s eyes right up until he stabs Gem in the chest.

She cries out, her shout quickly replaced with a gurgling sound. She falls to the ground, Glory’s knife pulled free from her body, and Glory just stands there for a moment, looking down at her.

 _Boom_.

It’s impossible to tell if he regrets his actions. His expression isn’t giving away anything, which makes sense. He’ll know that the cameras are on him at this moment, recording his betrayal and his subsequent reaction.

What he doesn’t know is that Keith is on camera, too. Standing just meters from him, having witnessed the whole scene.

Keith’s instinct is to stay hidden. This whole time, he’s been playing the Games on the defensive, only fighting when found, when forced to. But he realizes, at that moment, that this is a golden opportunity. That Glory is just staring down at Gem, still taking it in, apparently, and completely unaware that Keith is there. Watching him.

It’s risky. It’s giving away his position, even though he doesn’t have to. Missing could mean Keith’s death, but if he hits home, there will only be five tributes left. One of which will be Lance, who Keith isn’t scared of. He _wants_ Lance to win, in fact.

He has no idea what to think of Lance’s district partner, but he knows Robin is likely a threat, and Rosie must be, too, considering she’s lasted this long.

Plus, Glory doesn’t look like he’s at the top of his game. Sure, Keith isn’t either — he’s weak and sore from his tumble down the mountain — but Glory looks worse off. He’s badly injured, blood seeping through his shirt from a wound on his stomach. There’s no telling who gave him the wound or what weapon caused it, but whoever’s responsible is definitely a tribute to be wary of.

Even still, Keith should probably be thanking them right now. It’s clear that at peak performance, Glory is definitely someone to be scared of. But right now, Keith feels like he has a chance.

He moves before he can psych himself out of it, knowing all too well that he could manage to stand here and think over his options for hours if given the opportunity. But Glory is distracted and now’s his chance, so Keith carefully pulls one of the throwing knives from his belt.

He takes a breath, forcing himself to take it in slowly so as to stay calm, and then he steps into view.

Glory’s head whips up immediately, his eyes wide with alarm, and Keith doesn’t waste a second. He lets the knife fly as he releases his breath, watching with a mix of surprise and relief as it hits home.

The knife buries itself in Glory’s chest. He stumbles backward a step or two, his fingers wrapping belatedly around the handle protruding from his chest, and then he falls to the ground.

Keith forgets to listen for the sound of the canon. He just walks forward, as if in a dream, solely thinking about retrieving his knife. His mind is already several steps ahead of him, trying to figure out how to find Lance and defeat the other tributes and somehow manage to die before Lance so that Lance can live.

But when he reaches Glory’s side, a hand wraps around his ankle. A scream lodges itself in Keith’s throat, the fear and alarm rushing through him so powerful that it’s painful, but he clamps down on the scream struggling to be heard and looks down at the tribute from District 2.

“ _Please_ ,” Glory rasps. The sound of his voice is haunting, and not just because Keith already thought he was dead.

“What?” Keith manages, almost convinced this is a trap. Maybe Glory has one last trick up his sleeve, a way to take Keith out with him.

“Tell… m’ sist-sis…”

“Sister?” Keith guesses. “What? What do you want me to tell her?” For a second, Keith forgets he’s in the Games. Forgets that he’s the one who killed Glory, that it’s unlikely he’ll even be alive to tell Glory’s sister anything. That even if Keith dies, Glory’s last words will be projected across Panem for everyone to hear, for everyone’s ears that the words don’t belong to.

“Tell ‘er…” Glory says. His eyes are unfocussed, glassy. Keith leans closer, desperate the hear what Glory wanted to say—

 _Boom_.

The sound of the cannon shocks Keith. He stumbles backward in a panic, breaking away from Glory’s grasp on his ankle, and he trips backward, landing on his ass and staring at the two dead bodies before him.

“Sorry,” Keith whispers, breathing heavily. “I’m sorry.”

He whispers a third apology as he steals a sleeping back — the one closest to Gem, not wanting to steal from Glory, for whatever reason — and then he leaves the clearing, finally allowing the hovercrafts to come and collect the bodies.

He feels so faraway, so disconnected from everything happening, that he doesn’t even notice when he arrives on the beach, apparently having walked the rest of the way there. He doesn’t even notice Lance, sitting meters away on a piece of driftwood, until Lance looks up from where his head was cushioned in his arms with a shout of surprise.

“Keith?!” he says.

And Lance — he grounds Keith. He pulls him right back to the earth, puts Keith’s head back in the game. He just stands there for a second, gaping, until he finally registers what he’s seeing.

“ _Lance_ ,” he says.

A moment later, they’re sprinting toward each other. Colliding in a hug that knocks Keith to the ground, that has them laughing and burying their faces in each other’s shoulders.

“I can’t believe you’re alive,” Lance laughs. He sits up, remaining on Keith’s lap, and just looks down at him.

“Me?” Keith says, disbelieving. “You’re the one who fell down the mountain with an injury! I thought it would reopen.”

“It did, but I had the medicine still,” Lance says. “But all those canons! I thought they were you, each time!”

Keith scoffs, his own fear having dissipated now despite the same worries plaguing him just the day before. It’s stupid, because they’re out in the open, anyone could find them, but Keith can’t find it in him to feel scared. Gem and Glory are gone. It’s him and Lance against three others. As for what’ll happen afterward… well, Keith isn’t planning on thinking about that right now.

“Wow,” Keith says. “So little faith.”

“It wasn’t an observation of your skill,” Lance argues. “But obviously, my mind immediately went to the worst-case scenario.”

“Me too,” Keith admits, smiling guilty, and Lance rolls his eyes.

“Did you hear those two canons, just now?”

“I was there,” Keith reveals, and he tells Lance about Glory’s betrayal, about killing Glory himself, and the last words Glory didn’t manage to speak. Lance doesn’t laugh at him for feeling bad about it, and Keith doesn’t know why he’d thought he might. After all, Lance was the one who was sad over his first kill.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Lance says, holding his hand now. “I’m glad you survived.”

“Likewise,” Keith says. “There’s only three people left, now.”

Neither of them mention the fact that that’s not entirely true. That there’ll be one more death after that. Keith has this horrible, sneaking feeling that Lance’s mind has been running along the same lines as his own. That he’ll want Keith to survive, rather than him.

But they’ve been working together, all this time. He’ll see what Keith is really like when it’s them against each other, Keith arguing with Lance to the ends of the earth to make sure he gets the outcome he deserves. That Lance is the one who lives.

That’s something to think about later, though. For now, they spend their time together happily. Lance teaches him how to fish, wading into the ocean with a net and coming back moments later with the thing full of fish. Keith, meanwhile, stands meters away from him, watching the glint of sunlight off the backs of the fish and jabbing his hands into the water, hoping to catch one. Each time, he’s unsuccessful, though a few times he swears he feels his fingers graze the edge of something living.

Eventually, he ends up collecting a few oysters from under the water — they’re the only things that don’t move — and they feast on Lance’s fish and the few oysters Keith managed to collect.

Lance, similarly, didn’t grab the sleeping bag as they escaped from the avalanche. He’s excited to see the one Keith managed to procure, and they wander back into the jungle for the night to find a safer place to sleep.

They don’t actually get in the sleeping bag, considering it’s already hot out and it’ll only be hotter tomorrow, but they lay on it and they face one another as they fall asleep. As the anthem plays and Gem and Glory are featured in the sky.

They talk about how worried they were, being separated from one another. They talk about the skills they remember the remaining tributes having back at the training center. They talk about where they might be now, and strategies they have against them, and neither of them mentions the inevitability that they’re clearly both avoiding.

In the morning, Keith wakes up alone, and he allows himself to panic for half a second before convincing himself that he would’ve heard the canon, and that no one could’ve kidnapped Lance without him hearing, and that Lance wouldn’t have abandoned him for no reason.

He wanders out of the jungle, his shirt already sticking to him with sweat, and the scene that greets him has his mouth curling up in an embarrassed smile.

“Morning, sleeping beauty,” Lance says, already sitting at his little set up.

Somehow, Lance has made a table out of sand right in the shade of the trees. It must have taken him a million trips down to the water, using whatever materials he had on hand to carry water back to help him shape the little table.

He’s sitting on one side of it, an array of fish and what looks to be a few delicacies like bread and fruit accompanying it. Either he had those in his bag when they escaped from their cave, or their sponsors really, _really_ like them and sent them for the sake of Lance’s special breakfast.

Across from Lance, the spot clearly reserved for Keith has the same meal sitting there on the table. There’s a little canister that the sponsors’ gifts come in at the center of the table, and there are a few flowers sticking out of it. It’s surrounded by seashells, and Lance has even lit the tip of a stick on fire, burying it in the sandy table to act as a makeshift candle.

Keith, having finally taken the scene in, lets out a huff of laughter. “What is this?” he asks.

“What does it look like?” Lance responds. “I’m taking you out on a date. Come join me.”

Still trying to contain his smile, Keith sinks down across from Lance, who starts talking immediately.

“Before you, we have delicious, seared tuna,” Lance says. “Chef’s choice, caught fresh by a fishing master from District 4.”

“Oh really?” Keith says.

“Not to mention Capitol bread rolls, fluffy and buttery and—” Lance touches one of the rolls “—yes, still warm.”

Keith props his chin in his hand, letting his fingers cover his unrestrained grin. He doesn’t even care that they’re definitely on camera right now, their date being broadcasted to the rest of the districts.

“And lastly, a fruit salad containing nothing poisonous. I checked,” Lance says proudly.

“What’s the occasion?” Keith says, unable to help himself.

“Well, a little birdie told me you’d never been on a date before,” Lance says.

“I told you that. Like, a few days ago.”

“ _And_ ,” Lance continues, clearly ignoring him, “I thought you deserved one.”

“I feel like we did this backwards,” Keith jokes. “First you take me out to dinner, _then_ I let you take me home.”

Lance clears his throat, blushing. “Yeah, my b,” he says. “Do you like it, though?”

Keith rolls his eyes, pulling off a chunk of the bread. “I love it, obviously,” he says. “It’s very romantic.”

“I’m a romantic guy,” Lance assures him. “And I’m about to wow your socks off with how good this date is going to be.”

With that, they dig in. Lance really did do an awesome job with preparing the food. He sprinkles compliments all throughout the meal, never giving Keith enough time to return to his normal color. And at the end of it, he gives Keith a chaste kiss on the mouth.

It’s exactly what Keith would’ve expected from a first date. And somehow, Lance managed to produce it in the Games.

There’s no telling whether they were just lucky enough to avoid being interrupted during their meal by the other tributes or if the Gamemakers intentionally kept them busy elsewhere, but Keith finds he doesn’t mind. He’s just glad he got to have this time with Lance.

They’ve just stopped at a river, having walked there hand-in-hand to fill their canteens and purify their water, when they freeze at the sound of trumpets.

They share a terrified look. Trumpets precede an announcement. Sometimes, the Gamemakers will announce a banquet. It’s a way to draw the tributes back to one place, to hurry up the Games and spill more blood. There’s usually something each tribute desperately needs at the banquet, but Keith can’t think of anything that would draw him and Lance in. They’re good on food and water and medicine. They have everything they need, really.

The head Gamemaker’s voice echoes throughout the arena, congratulating the five tributes who remain. He then announces that there will be a rule change, which makes Keith feel dizzy with surprise.

The Games don’t really have any rules, other than the unspoken ones. You kill to survive. You leave the bodies alone after you kill them, so that they can be taken away by the hovercrafts. You don’t step off your circle when the Games start unless you want to be blown sky-high.

The Gamemaker continues. He explains the rule change, saying that to show that the Capitol is forgiving, and the Districts ruthless, any tribute who kills their District partner will be declared a winner and allowed to go home, meaning there could be more than one Victor.

He repeats the rule once more, finishing up with, “and may the odds be in your favor,” before his voice disappears, the sound of the insects from the jungle returning the second he’s finished speaking.

Keith stands there in silence, for a moment, just taking it in. Lance sinks to the ground, staring hard at the water. Finally, he speaks.

“We could both win,” he says, sounding distant. Broken.

“Yeah,” Keith says. And then, “If we kill them.”

“Yeah,” Lance says.

Keith sinks to the ground, too. Somehow, when he’d been thinking about the tributes that were left, he hadn’t really thought too hard about his own District partner, Rosie. In his head, it’d all be abstract. Idly, he’d hoped that Robin might get to her first. And that if she didn’t, Lance would be the one to kill her, and he could be the one to kill Maisie.

Either that, or Rosie would come after him, first, and he’d kill her in self-defense.

Now, though, if he wants to be able to return home with Lance, he’ll have to kill her. And he’s absolutely sure that they’ll be the ones who have to actually kill them. If anyone else kills them, it’ll be back to normal. It could end with Keith and Lance being the last ones standing, and they’d have to narrow it down to one of them, just like usual.

“God,” Lance breathes. “I don’t know if I can do it.”

“You don’t have to do anything,” Keith says. “We’ll make sure you go home.”

Lance whips his head toward Keith, glaring at him. “I wasn’t planning on having this conversation just yet, but I’m not letting you sacrifice your life for mine.”

Keith laughs, the sound holding no humor. “You don’t have to _let_ me do anything,” he says. “I’m just going to do it.”

“Stop being noble,” Lance says. “You deserve to live just as much as I do.”

“Maybe, but that doesn’t mean I’ll actually get to.”

“Sure you will!” Lance snaps. “We can _both_ go home! We just have to…” he trails off, blinking. Realizing what he just implied.

“Yeah,” Keith says, feeling nauseous. “That’s all we have to do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> find me @jacecares / @bluegaysonly for twitter fun 👉👉 
> 
> P.S. -- my friend eli who was updating this fic for me while i was Away made a twitter account!! she's posting art at @keithjpeg if u wanna take a look/give her a follow :') she's been participating in the fandom solely through me for Years and this is her first foray into the klance fandom on her own :')))


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AHHHHHH i'm so sorry guys i totally forgot to upload this chapter 🥴 hopefully it was worth the extra wait!!! pls enjoy!!!! <333

Keith wakes up to a feeling of unrestrained panic. He and Lance spent the day ignoring the rule change and the mixture of anxiety and hope it brought with it, instead acting as they normally would have. He was pretty sure they were both idly hoping that their District partners would come after them and that the following fight wouldn’t be their fault.

(As if the Games and the situation they’re in are in any way their fault.)

Still, they somehow managed to forget about Robin. Forget that she is clearly a threat, and probably more than a little angry at the rule change, considering her District partner is long gone. That to survive, she’ll have to kill all four of them.

Keith abruptly remembers her presence and the threat she poses when he wakes to the feeling of something crawling on him. To _several_ _somethings_ crawling on them.

He sucks in a breath, moments away from sitting up and swatting at everything touching him, when a quiet voice halts him.

“I wouldn’t move, if I were you,” she says. Slowly, Keith tilts his head, and he finds Robin perched on a log a couple feet from him. She’s squatting there, her arms folded on her knees as she looks down at Keith. Lance, beside him, has somehow managed to stay asleep.

“What are these?” Keith croaks. He can feel them in his sleeping bag, along his body. Something tickles at his hair.

“Spiders,” Robin says calmly. “The Capitol calls them Hell Spiders. They’re an old kind of mutation. I don’t think anyone expected to find them in these Games.”

Keith swallows, letting his eyes slip closed as he tries to contain himself. As he tries to calm his panic and keep from jumping to his feet and sprinting away from the danger.

“Poisonous?” he guesses.

“Very,” Robin says. She sounds young. She must be about thirteen, and somehow she’s survived this long. “You’ll be dead in seconds.”

“Right,” Keith whispers. He’s sure the spiders are on Lance, too, not that he’s willing to turn his head to check.

“They’re generally pretty calm creatures,” Robin continues. “But they bite when they sense movement. They can feel when your heart is beating too fast, too.”

“Why?” Keith says, purposefully slowing his breathing, trying to calm his heart. He desperately hopes Lance doesn’t try to roll over in his sleep. “Why kill us like this?”

Robin taps her fingers on her knees, tilting her head as she thinks. “I wanted to be able to talk, first,” she explains. “If I just had you at knifepoint, you wouldn’t be scared enough to sit still and listen. You could overpower me, even.”

“Makes sense.”

“Thank you,” Robin says, smiling. “To be clear, I think this is a rather cruel way to kill someone, and I am sorry for that. But I really wanted to explain.”

“Well, you have a captive audience,” Keith says. “Literally.”

Robin laughs at his joke and Keith feels his heart skip a beat, fearing the spiders will hear and respond by biting Keith. They don’t, though, so Keith gets to continue living for the time being.

“I had to kill you two,” Robin says, serious now. “I’ve known that you were working together, and to my knowledge, your District partners haven’t even met.”

Keith stays silent, waiting for her to continue. Waiting for her to get to her point.

“And that announcement,” she continues, letting out a disbelieving laugh, “that was the worst thing that’s happened to me this whole time. Like, how the hell is that fair?”

“I don’t know,” Keith whispers.

“I figured it had something to do with you two,” she says. Her fingers are playing with her shoelaces now, twisting them around and around and around. “I mean, to even give us the chance to have two winners? I’m sure it’s because the audience is obsessed with you, for whatever reason. Something about you made them demand your survival.

“But I want to survive just as much as the next person. I deserve to live as much as you. I want to go home to _my_ family. And the Games are only supposed to have one winner!”

“True,” Keith whispers. He can’t think of anything else to say. He’s practically dead already.

“I just want to know,” Robin says. “What did you two do? How did you make the audience like you so much?”

To Keith’s surprise, it’s Lance who answers.

“We fell in love,” he says quietly. Out of the corner of his eye, Keith sees Lance. He’s staring up at the sky, laying perfectly still. Keith has no idea when he woke up, but he’s clearly much smarter than Keith’s panicked mind gave him credit for. He didn’t wake up and scream at the feeling of spiders crawling all over him. He just accepted it and listened.

Robin is silent for a moment. She just sits there, staring at them.

“Oh,” she says finally. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s every man for himself in here,” Lance says. “We get it. We would’ve killed you if we had the chance — you’re just doing the same thing.”

“Still,” Robin says. She straightens up, standing on the log now and looking down at them. Keith can feel each and every one of his breaths, knowing that they could be his last. “It’ll be quick,” Robin promises. “Hell Spider venom travels fast. You’ll barely even have time to feel it.”

Lance grins. “Thanks for being considerate,” he says. “I appreciate a quick death as much as the next guy.”

The situation is so absurd that Keith almost laughs, but he manages to tamp it down in the interest of not dying just yet.

“Right,” Robin says. And then she leaves. She walks past them, toward the edge of the clearing, where a spear erupts through her body.

She drops to the ground, dead with the sound of a canon, and Keith feels the swarm of spiders all over his body. He clenches his eyes shut, holding his breath, as they run over him, along his neck and over his face and through his hair, crawling rapidly toward the fresh blood.

He opens his eyes when he no longer feels them on him, instead seeing them crawling all over Robin’s body, now shining in the moonlight with the glint of her blood on their little bodies.

“Hell Spiders like fresh blood,” someone says.

“Maisie,” Lance breathes, sitting up slowly. Keith follows in suit, still half afraid that there’s a spider lurking somewhere near him.

“Let’s get away from here,” Maisie says. “This’ll only distract them for so long.”

Keith doesn’t want to go anywhere with Maisie, but for whatever reason, she just saved their lives.

They leave their sleeping bag behind, too eager to get out of there and paranoid that there are still spiders in it, besides, and they follow Maisie.

She leads them to the beach, past the table Lance built for their date, and none of them speak. Too clearly, Keith remembers meeting her for the first time. Masquerading as Lance’s captive and tricking them all, escaping from them to instead be on their own.

“Why’d you save us?” Lance finally says, apparently having dug up the courage to speak.

“Right now, there’s still a chance for any one of us to go home,” Maisie says simply. “Robin had to die. No matter how you look at it, it’s fairer for two people to get to go home. I would have let you die if her District partner was still alive.”

“Makes sense,” Lance admits. He looks queasy. He, like Keith, probably accepted his death about five minutes ago. Probably saw the end clearly and made peace with it in those few minutes that Robin spoke to them.

Now, he’s faced with Maisie, his District partner. Faced with the murder he thought he wouldn’t have to commit. And Maisie, for whatever reason, seems perfectly comfortable. Probably because she’s already made peace with the idea of killing Lance.

Finally, they come to a stop, following Maisie’s lead. They’re standing in the middle of the beach and Keith is struck by how beautiful the scenery is.

He never saw a beach in person before the Games. The sand shifts under their feet with every step and the sound of the ocean is something that he could listen to all day long. The rhythmic crashing of the waves on the beach, the dull and comforting roar of the ocean, doing the same thing all day, every day, with or without an audience.

The moonlight glistens off the undulating waves, and whereas the sun on the water was glaringly bright, the moonlight is just perfect. It glints and gleams with the motion of the sea, and Keith finds that he could stare at this all night long, too. That it’s beautiful and peaceful in the least beautiful and peaceful place he’s ever been.

“All right,” Maisie says. “One of us has to die,” she says, looking at Lance. “Twelve,” she adds, turning to face Keith. “You can neither interfere nor kill the survivor. I don’t care whether you or your District partner survives, but this way, two people get to go home. It’s only fair.”

Keith just stands there, feeling like he might explode. She’s right, of course. Two people _should_ get to go home. But, however selfish it may be, he wants it to be him and Lance. He wants them to survive. Or at the very least, he wants Lance to survive.

“Okay,” Keith says, regardless. He just has to put his faith in Lance. Has to believe that he’ll fight Maisie with everything he’s worth, no matter what.

“How are we doing this?” Maisie says, turning to look at Lance. “Weapons? Bare hands? What do you want?”

Lance looks sick to his stomach. His trident is by his side, the tip having been dragging through the sand as they walked, and his fingers are holding the handle in a white-knuckled grip.

“Rock-paper-scissors,” he says.

“ _What_?” Keith says, unable to help himself.

Lance doesn’t look at him. He’s just staring at Maisie, still looking like he might throw up at any second.

“Seriously?” she says.

“Yeah,” Lance says. “If you’re down with that.”

She stares at him, as if trying to figure out whether he’s joking, before realizing he’s completely serious. She shrugs.

“All right,” she says.

Keith is just standing there, gaping. Wondering when he went and fell in love — because Lance wasn’t wrong, what he said to Robin — with someone who is _clearly_ insane.

Lance, leaving his survival to chance?

It sounds stupid. Sounds _insane_. And yet somehow, it’s completely Lance. He doesn’t want to kill Maisie, hasn’t wanted to kill anyone, and it makes sense that he would leave it up to chance. That he would let the simple action of a children’s game decide which of them gets to survive this horrible ordeal.

Keith almost can’t look. His hands twitch by his sides, wanting nothing more than to come up and cover his eyes, but he forces himself to keep watching. To know what the outcome will be before he sees the results of the game.

“One round?” Maisie suggests, and Lance nods.

“No re-dos, and we both stick to the outcome,” Maisie continues. “Loser dies quietly, no arguing, no begging.”

“Agreed,” Lance whispers. “Keith can make sure there’s no cheating.”

“He’ll be impartial?” she asks Lance, as if Keith isn’t standing right there.

“Yes,” Lance says anyway, and then they both hold out their fists. Lance rests his fist on his open palm, but Maisie just holds hers out there, her free hand balled into a fist in her pocket.

Despite how confident and sure of herself she seems, she’s just as anxious as Lance. She wants to live just as much as he does, and yet she, too, is letting this be up to chance.

“Okay,” Lance says. Together, they chant. Rock, paper, scissors…

They throw out their hands at the same time. Maisie stands there with her hand flat, paper, and Lance stares at her in horror.

He’s holding out scissors.

The relief that floods Keith is inexplicable. Better than anything he can ever remember feeling before. He’d laugh, if he had less tact, but as it is, he stays silent. He stands there, waiting for what they’ll do next. Hand resting on his knife, just in case Maisie tries to kill Lance anyway.

“I’m sorry,” Lance whispers.

“Don’t be,” Maisie says brusquely. “You won, fair and square. Just get it over with.”

“You want me to…?”

“Obviously,” Maisie snaps. “We both know if I do it, they won’t count the win as yours. This would all have been for nothing. You have to do it.”

Lance looks down at the trident in his hand, his mouth parted.

“Here,” Keith says, holding out a knife. It seems more human, somehow, to kill her with a knife rather than a trident. Especially because she’s going so quietly, so agreeably.

Lance takes it, his hand shaking, and he steps forward. Maisie closes her eyes, breathing out shakily.

“Just do it fast,” she says. “I don’t want to feel it.”

“I will,” Lance promises, and then he looks at Keith in a panic, as if not knowing how to make it quick, after all. Keith slides his finger across his own neck. He figures that would be the fastest way, especially if Lance tried to aim for her heart and missed.

Lance looks sick, but he moves forward anyway. He steps behind Maisie, wrapping one arm around her waist in the imitation of a hug. He brushes her hair away from her face, whispers something in her ear, and Maisie smiles.

Then Lance slits her throat. There’s blood everywhere and she goes limp, but Lance lowers her body gently to the ground, laying her on her back and brushing her hair away from her face. The canon booms through the arena, and Keith moves to Lance’s side. They stand a respectful distance away, bowing their heads as the hovercraft comes to pick her up.

After that, Lance washes off in the ocean in silence. Neither of them break it, but they stay close to one another’s sides, their hands brushing in the water on occasion.

It’s horrible, but Keith can’t help feeling relieved, knowing Lance will get to live.

\--

Neither of them sleep after that. Keith isn’t sure how many hours pass, but eventually the sun rises, proving time moves on.

They’re still on the beach when that happens, just sitting on the sand and watching the tide move closer. That’s when Lance finally speaks.

“Just Rosie left, now,” he says. His voice sounds scratchy with disuse. Keith thinks they should both feel exhausted, right now. They didn’t sleep much last night. In fact, he doubts either of them has gotten a good night’s rest since before the Games, before their lives were constantly in peril.

“The Gamemakers will probably do something to herd us closer, soon,” Keith says. And then, “How are you?”

“Better than I should be, probably,” Lance says. “The worst thing is, I feel relieved.”

Keith grabs his hand. He can feel the sand between their fingers. Squeezes a little tighter just to feel them dig in.

“Same,” Keith agrees. “You’re not a horrible person, Lance. You’re just trying to live. And had Maisie won, you would’ve gone quietly like she did.”

“You’re right,” Lance says. He pulls Keith’s hand up to his mouth, kissing the back of it. “What do you say we head to the cornucopia? Get there before the Gamemakers can make us.”

“I say you’re a genius.” Keith smiles, and he stands up first, pulling Lance to his feet after him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SORRY AGAIN i didn't realize i'd forgotten to upload until someone sent me an ask on tumblr 🥵 have a great rest of your week!!


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys!! hope you're all doing well! one chapter left after this one, enjoy!!

They turn out to be right on time.

They get to the cornucopia, assuming the Gamemakers would want them there rather than anywhere else for the final scene. It’s big and open, no trees or anything to block the view, and with the two of them already there, there’s only one person left to actually herd.

They’ve just sat down, having decided to eat in order to retain their energy, when Lance sucks in a breath.

“What is it?” Keith asks.

“Look,” Lance says. He’s staring toward the south, in the direction of the ocean.

Or… what used to be the ocean.

“What the hell?” Keith says. “Where did it go?”

“I don’t…” Lance pauses, his mouth hanging open. “In school, we learned about these things that used to happen. Tsunamis.”

“What’s that?” Keith asks.

“It’s, like, a really big wave,” Lance says slowly. “People used to know when they were going to happen because the ocean would disappear. In reality, it had just pulled back really far, and it’d come back as this killer wave.”

“You don’t think…”

“I have no idea,” Lance says.

“Could it really reach all this way?” Keith asks. “I mean, the beach is pretty far.”

“I think it could reach us, maybe,” Lance says. “We should get on the cornucopia, just to be safe.”

Keith nods, hesitant. The cornucopia is a good fifteen feet or more above the ground. Were it a summer day in the arena, the metal would likely burn them as they tried to climb it. Today, it’s just cold to the touch.

They scramble up its chilled, slippery surface, and Keith can’t help but think that there really isn’t all that much to hold onto, up here. That if the wave is taller than the cornucopia, they’ll both be washed away.

Maybe that’s what the Gamemakers want. Maybe it was all a ploy, to get them to kill their District partners savagely and then finish them both off, as well.

Except Rosie’s still nowhere to be seen, and if this tsunami thing actually happens, she’ll probably die down there. Unless she’s hiding up in the mountains.

Keith follows behind Lance, digging the pads of his fingers into the notches of the cornucopia. His legs and arms ache. His body and mind have gone through the wringer. At this point, he almost can’t wait to kill Rosie. To get it over and done with and finally leave this stupid arena.

Lance reaches the top of the cornucopia first, swinging one leg over and scrambling up. He lets out a shout the second he disappears from view.

“Lance!” Keith shouts. He follows him up, flinging himself over the edge, and halts right where he lands. Lance is standing, backing away from Rosie, who stands there holding swords in both of her hands.

“I was gonna come down there to kill you, but when I heard District 4 here talking about tsunamis, I decided it’d be better to wait for you to come to me,” Rosie says brightly, swinging one of her swords in a circle. She looks deranged, her hair a mess and her eyes bloodshot. She has bandages on some of her knuckles and her lip is split.

“We can do this calmly,” Keith says, raising his hands in a gesture of peace.

Rosie barks out a laugh, her eyes sliding from Lance to Keith. “Do _what_ calmly?” she snaps. “Kill each other? Or did you want to talk it out? Try to convince me why _you_ deserve to live? You’re sick.”

“Only one of us has to die,” Keith says. “We can leave Lance out of it.”

“You die, then,” Rosie says. “You choose to die, or I’ll kill him anyway.”

Keith’s mouth goes dry. This terrible, indescribable panic courses through him, weakening his knees and stealing his breath.

Lance is safe. Lance _should be_ safe. That’s what he _earned_ after going through the bullshit of having to kill Maisie, of suffering through these fucking Games and making it to the end with Keith. The thought of Rosie managing to kill Keith, securing the lives of two Victors, only to turn around and kill Lance as some sort of sick punishment?

Keith feels nauseous. He feels like the floor’s opened up beneath him, like that tsunami came and swept him away.

He has to do whatever it takes to keep Lance safe.

“Fuck you,” Lance blurts. When Keith looks at him, Lance isn’t staring at Rosie. He’s staring at Keith.

“What?”

“You heard me!” Lance snaps. “Don’t throw away your life to save mine. Fight and live. I’ll be fine.”

God, Lance is… way too perceptive. Of course, they could both still live. All Keith has to do is win, like he’s won against the others.

And yet his first instinct when hearing Lance threatened was to lay down his life. He can’t decide whether that’s noble or pathetic.

 _Pathetic_ , Lance would say.

“It’s not fair,” Rosie whispers. She’s looking at Keith with wide, crazed eyes. It’s like there’s no humanity left in her, which isn’t that odd of a thing to happen to a tribute. They’ve all seen it happen, sitting in front of their TVs at home, forced to watch the Games commence.

People are forced to do atrocious things. Everyone in here is desperate for survival, and no one leaves especially sane. But some people devolve further than others. There have been tributes that tried to eat the people they’d killed. Tributes who would torture them before killing them, some part of their mind having broken, having driven them to insanity. Some people turn downright evil in here, and Rosie’s eyes don’t look much different from theirs.

Keith wonders what she’s gone through in here. What she’s faced, who she’s killed, while he and Lance have been working side by side.

This doesn’t seem like the quiet girl from District 12, who shut herself in her room instead of talking to Shiro on the train ride. Like the girl back at the training center, rarely ever speaking unless spoken to.

“What?” Keith says. He whispers it back, not entirely sure why. Maybe he’s afraid loud noises will spook her.

“This!” she hisses, waving her hand between Keith and Lance. “Everyone’s already rooting for you to win. _I know it_.”

“You don’t know that,” Keith says. He doesn’t know why he’s comforting her. He doesn’t know why he hasn’t tried to kill her yet.

“Oh, yeah?” she says. “How many gifts did you guys get?”

“I don’t—"

“More than me,” Rosie says. “I’m sure of it. I got _zero_.”

“Rosie,” Keith says, but Rosie just shakes her head. She does it so harshly that it’s almost painful to look at.

“Shut up,” she spits. “I don’t care anymore. I’ll kill you both.”

Keith draws his knives just as she descends, her swords raised to slash right down through his shoulders. He blocks her by some miracle, dancing away across the cornucopia, leading her farther from Lance.

Her teeth are bared as she attacks Keith. He enters some kind of alternate mindset, barely aware of what he’s doing. It’s his body that moves, his mind two steps behind. Breathe. Dodge. Block. Attack. Don’t die, don’t die, don’t die.

“I have family,” Rosie growls. Her sword whistles through the air as Keith trips out of the way. The whole cornucopia is uneven, its structure ridged and layered. “You’re just an orphan.”

Keith doesn’t grant this a response. Instead, he throws one of his knives at her. It glances off her sword but then buries itself in her thigh, resulting in a roar of pain and anger. Neither seem to detriment her fight or determination and she nearly slices Keith’s hand off as he reaches for another knife in his belt.

“Keith!” Lance calls, and Keith spares him a second of a glance, just long enough to see where he’s pointing. In the distance, the ocean has returned. The top of it is white with foam, the water already surpassing the beach.

His attention is drawn back to Rosie just in time to get sliced along his arm rather than his face. They exchange blows and dodge death for what feels like hours, from the exhaustion in Keith’s mind and the pounding in his chest, but he knows it’s only seconds.

And in those seconds, the tsunami advances on them. It must move even faster than the train that took them to the Capitol. It barrels across the field, tumbling trees, until it slams against the cornucopia with a force that sends it shaking.

Water sprays into the air from the impact. To Keith’s horror, enough water rushes over the opposite side of the structure to force Lance off his feet. His body slides along the surface, his hands scrabbling for purchase, until he catches hold of a notch in the cornucopia and dangles there, just inches above the rushing water below.

The tsunami means death.

Keith knows it already, just seeing it. The water’s rushing past them so fast, the surface so high up from the ground. If Lance falls in, Keith doesn’t doubt for a second that he’ll be sucked under its currents. Either unable to find his way back to the top or slammed into the metal and killed instantly.

The fear overtakes him, crushes him, and Keith’s distraction nearly costs him his life. He ends up on his back, Rosie kneeling over him and only Keith’s knives keeping her swords from severing his head from his body.

“No,” Keith mumbles, and then again, louder. “Let me help Lance,” he says.

“Fuck you,” Rosie spits.

“Please,” he begs. “You can kill me after — I’ll let you. Just let me save him.”

“You already lost that opportunity,” Rosie growls. “Now you both get to die.”

“Keith!” Lance shouts. Keith can’t see him, can’t even turn his head. His arms are shaking, feeling leaden and weak under the force of Rosie’s swords, his grip on his knives sweaty and slipping. But he doesn’t hear Lance fall, and he doesn’t hear a canon.

Above him, Rosie’s grinning. Tasting victory, he thinks, albeit prematurely. There’s nothing in those eyes, nothing but bloodlust and desperation. Blood collects on her lower lip, the split reopening with the force of her smile.

Keith stretches his legs out, finding a ridge in the cornucopia on the other side of Rosie. He tucks his heels against it and _pulls_ , sliding out from in between her legs just as he stops putting pressure against the force of her swords.

Rosie tips forward, her swords slamming into the now-empty space beneath her, and Keith jumps to his feet behind her, spinning to face his opponent. She roars, leaping back upright, but Keith’s already flung his knife.

It sails through the air, steady and true, and slams home into her back, just where her heart is.

Keith sees it as the life fades out of her. As she stumbles a step forward from the impact, confused. As the swords drop from her hands with matching _clangs_ , her fingers proven useless.

Rosie crumbles, her body thudding loudly against the metal beneath her, and her body lists to the side. The canon booms before she’s fallen off the cornucopia, at which point the water whisks her from view.

Keith killed her. Stabbed her right in the back.

“Keith,” Lance says quietly, breathless.

Keith turns, falling to his knees and latching onto Lance the second he’s close enough. The surface is slippery, the water still coursing around them in rivulets, but with something sturdy to hold onto, Lance is able to make better use of his footholds.

He collapses on Keith the second he reaches the top. The two of them just lay there, panting for breath and clutching one another tightly. Lance’s lips skim against Keith’s collarbone, pressing invisible kisses there once he catches his breath.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the Head Gamemaker’s voice booms. Keith lets out a breathless laugh, his eyes slipping shut. “I am pleased to present the Victors of the fifty-second Hunger Games, Lance McClain and Keith Kogane! I give you — the tributes of District Four and Twelve!”


End file.
